Mulciber misjudged a kick. Soundlessly, a tiny crease appeared in the plasti-foam wall of Suzy’s office. He halted his warm-up immediately. A matching crease appeared on his forehead, the equivalent of a fierce scowl for him. He reproached himself silently for his carelessness. Thinking at full battle-speed about anything but combat was dangerous. Suzy gave no sign of having noticed his error. Mulciber sat down and took up the computer file print-out from her desk quickly, so as to keep her eyes away from the dent in her office wall. He flipped through the file quickly to the most important part, the physical description. He always wanted to know first what he was up against. His eyes were arrested by a single item on the page, almost before he had had time to read anything.
What caught his eye was the age. Nine. They wanted him to kill a nine-year-old. For a second time his forehead creased in uncommon emotion. But this time the emotion was that of disgust. He flipped quickly to the slightly grainy, computer-generated color image of the child. His target looked back at him, a sturdy-looking boy with dark hair and dark, serious eyes. His lips were parted as if he had been speaking when the photograph was taken. Mulciber could see two gaps in his front teeth. Mulciber dumped the print-out back onto Suzy’s desk. The pile of paper sprawled out with a ruffling sound.
Suzy, who had been watching him closely, looked up from the file to Mulciber’s grim face. She looked worried.
“No,” said Mulciber.
“It won’t be as easy as it looks, Mulciber-there will be guards…”
“No.”
“But we need you. You know you’re the best we have,” Suzy pleaded, her words sliding off her tongue. Her voice worked on his mind like a balm on a wound. “This isn’t just family-to-family, city-to-city politics, this is bigger than that.”
“If your people want me to kill children then I’m out.”
“This boy’s family, they’re just criminal-” Suzy began, a sharp note creeping into her voice. She quickly checked herself and changed tacts. “Maybe you need a vacation Mulciber… Maybe after this we could go to Io, like we did last year. We could rent a cottage and spend all day feeling the ground tides and just watching the storms on Jupiter. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend some time… together?”
She leaned across her desk to lay her hand on Mulciber’s. There were jeweled rings on three of her fingers. She smiled at him, a bright-eyed smile, full of promise. Her teeth gleamed, matching her diamonds. Gently, with the air of a man picking up an injured songbird, Mulciber lifted her hand from his. He quelled his urge to give her a slight, apologetic squeeze as he placed her delicate hand back on the desk between them. Her hand was small, white and perfectly formed. His was huge and unnatural-looking, built of over-sized artificial bones and overlapping chunks of heavy muscle.
“You don’t understand, Suzanne-”
“Whatever happened to Suzy?” she asked, tilting her head to one side and looking hurt. Her full red lips pouted. She fingered the rings on her rejected hand sullenly.
“-All right, then… Suzy,” said Mulciber in resignation. It hurt him to see her looking dejected. He tried not to let it, but it did. “I don’t kill kids.”
Mulciber turned to one side, away from Suzy’s flashing rings, red lips and expensive desk. He looked down into his lap. His two powerful arms, networked with rope-like veins, ended in the square, thick-fingered hands of a killer. “There’s no challenge left. I’m not a hunter anymore… I do not stalk and defeat equals in combat. You want a scavenger, a thing in the night that steals children.”
Suzy came around from behind her desk. Her sheer clothing clung to the curves of her body and emphasized her attractive shape. She climbed into his lap, sliding herself between his arms and pressing herself against his unnaturally smooth, hairless skin. Mulciber remained motionless, staring grimly past her, staring at the crease he had put in her office wall. He did not shift to accommodate her weight; his desensitized nerves could hardly feel it. It was as if a butterfly had alighted on the lap of a somber bronze statue.
“Mulciber,” Suzy began softly. She pinched up a lock of her long blonde hair and traced the relief of his chest muscles with the end of it, like an artist applying brush-strokes to a painting. “We need you… I need you…”
Although he could hardly feel her weight on his lap, Mulciber could not help but be aware of her. Her perfume, mixed with the scent of her body, filled his sensitive nostrils with every breath he took. Suzy’s scent and the soft warmth of her body so close to his filled his head like a narcotic. He found his hand on her calf, feeling her smooth skin. Then his hand moved slowly up her soft thigh. He turned his head to look down at her. Her eyes were half-closed, her lips parted, waiting for him to kiss her.
But then he heard, saw, smelled and felt something else. Dying screams cut short. Doomed faces, twisted in the horror and surprise of their final moments. The sharp stink of fear. Warm clotting blood, washing his hands scarlet. Mulciber raised his head again, leaving Suzy’s face and the faces of his victims behind. Effortlessly, he lifted his manager off his lap and set her on her feet.
Suzy did not pout this time. She did not look dejected, she looked stunned. She straightened the flimsy material of her clothing with quick, harsh motions, like a cat shaking a wet paw.
Mulciber reseated himself. He sat as silent and impassive as a rock in the ocean. He gazed at the carpet. Suzy moved back behind her desk. When she spoke her voice held a different tone, one with a metal edge in it. “They won’t like this, Mulciber. They won’t let you quit.”
Mulciber made no move to reply.
“What’s wrong with killing criminals?” she asked suddenly, her voice imploring. Her beautifully made-up eyes pleaded with him.
“There is no honor in it,” he replied. He stood up. His body resembled something solid-not flesh-perhaps something carved out of granite. He was built in blocks rather than in curves, each muscle and cord clearly outlined beneath his reddish-tan skin. He raised one hand and closed it into a fist.
Suzy’s eyebrows arched at this; it was rare for Mulciber to perform such an idle gesture of body language. “There is nothing for me in the killing I do now. I do not grow greater by it.”
For the first time, Suzy frowned in annoyance. “You sound as if you think there is no one who can face you,” she said in an irritated tone. She rubbed her thigh where he had touched her. “You aren’t a god, you know.”
“No,” he agreed seriously. He looked into her eyes and grimly locked her gaze with his. He saw no understanding in there, only puzzlement. “Not a god… But am I a man?”
A light, corrosive-carrying rain fell on the city. As with all the larger domed cities, it rained almost constantly in Chicago. Precipitation continually gathered on the vast shining dome’s interior then dripped back again in an endless cycle, like a half-full bottle of liquid left in the sun. In Chicago, once known as the windy city, there was no such thing as open air.
The most foul living conditions in the city were found at ground level or near it. In the ancient, squalid streets it was always wet, hot and dark. The sun never reached down into the black pits of shade between the buildings. It was always night there, with garish neon lights and wispy hologram advertisements smiling and selling over every intersection. Thieves, murderers and vendors of all sorts abounded, working their respective arts on the crowds that thronged the avenues.
Mulciber crouched five stories above the glare-lit streets on an old ledge of eroded concrete. Ten feet below him and off to his left a sky-street ran out of the building. The people on it did not see him. To their eyes, he was only another formless projection of the shadowy building. He had been as motionless as the concrete itself for three hours. Water ran down his hairless pate to form acidic drops at the tip of his nose. He maintained his vigil over the sky-street, ignoring the rain as he ignored all else but the faces of those who slid past his perch. It had been several hours since he had informed Suzy that he was quitting. He expected she would find a temporary replacement, and give him a chance to ‘come to his senses’ — before informing her superiors. There was a quiver of motion on Mulciber’s normally impassive face at this thought, a glimmer of a smile. The superiors would instruct their inferiors, and then they would start to come for him. There was time yet for leaving the city, but he had no desire to run from his enemies. At least they would not be children.