Peter stood beside a hangar, along with Eddy and three mobsters from the Itami gang. The way the men’s muscles rolled under their coats when they moved frightened Peter. These thugs were another league.
The five of them looked out toward one of O’Hare’s runways. The lights of the O’Hare Subsprawl were even brighter than those of Chicago, changing the night sky into the pale white of early dawn. In the cold, Peter saw their breaths roll out as a thick mist of red, then dissipate to pink, and then nothing.
Everybody but Peter held Uzis. His weapon was a Predator II heavy pistol, specially fitted for his hand. After practicing with it all week, he could use it well enough now. The recoil felt light in his hand, but he knew the gun packed a terrible punch.
Seeing a small, private plane roll to a stop on the runway, Peter felt his breathing become rapid. As planned an armored truck waited to meet the plane.
Perhaps Eddy had been right when he assured Peter that everything was in place, nothing could go wrong, no shots need be fired. But the gun in his hand, the metal cold in the winter air, bit into his flesh. “I’m here,” the metal said, “and if I wasn’t needed, I wouldn’t be around.”
Peter’s mind swirled as he tried not to think about the problems that might arise.
Watching the guards move with clean precision, shifting the crates to the truck, Peter saw a beauty in their motions. He had been spending so much time crammed into his chip, learning about the smallest elements of human life. But now, watching it all come together, watching how DNA allowed the guards to move…
…To move the cargo that a man had gone out and hunted. To allow a pilot to fly the hides into Chicago. To allow someone to design the plane that the pilot flew…
And Peter and his cohorts. All five of them thieves, all capable of stealing the hides away… All because their DNA gave them the urge to want more—and the ability to take.
And the guards, they could try to keep the hides. But they wouldn’t. Down through the generations, the capacity to be bribed.
All this coming together on the tarmac.
A genotype determined which phenotypes arose in a given environment. The body as well as the mind. And part of the environment was made up of other people, other phenotypes. And since it was nearly impossible these days for someone to interact with an environment that wasn’t man-made, almost everything was controlled by the phenotypes of other people. Life was made up of phenotypes turning genotypes into phenotypes over and over again.
“Hey, Profezzur?” Eddy said with a harsh edge in his voice.
“Yeah?”
Peter came out of his daze and saw the truck moving down the runway. The plane’s flight lights flashed on as it began to taxi in the other direction.
“You’re not gonna shut down on me, are you?”
“No. I was just thinking.”
“You should watch that. Crime isn’t-Crime isn’t-Crime isn’t an introspective profession.” Eddy smiled up at Peter, who smiled back.
The mobsters became shadowed blurs as they ran for cover behind a pile of crates.
Eddy tugged on his arm. “We’re up. Stash the metal-metal.”
Peter slipped his gun into his holster and followed Eddy out into the road leading off the tarmac. The truck drove up and slowed to a stop. The cab doors opened, and two laughing guards climbed out. Their faces glowed a bright red in the cold night air.
“Well, it’s all yours,” one of them said. “Let me just get the guys out of the back.”
Peter’s muscles relaxed. It was going to work.
Eddy followed the guard around to the other side of the truck, and Peter followed Eddy. “And now we just drive away with the hides?”
“That’s-that’s-that’s right.” Off to the right the lights of a van switched on, and Go-Mo, an old friend of Eddy’s brought the van around to the truck. “They continue down to the U. of C, go through the whole rigmarole with the boxes, sign in and out. Next day, the boxes are opened and the hides are gone. They think they were stolen from the U. of C., and we weren’t anywhere near the scene of the crime.”
The guard slipped his lock into the back door of the truck and opened it. The lights of the van illuminated the interior of the truck, revealing two men, one in his late twenties, the other in his early forties. The older man’s jaw trembled, his face a mask of fear.
“We’ve got a problem,” said the young guard.
“What’s that?” asked Eddy.
“Jenkins isn’t on your payroll.”
“Jenkins? Jenkins? There’s no-no-no Jenkins.”
The young guard hopped out the back of the truck. “Oh, yeah there is.” He jerked his thumb at the man inside. “Jenkins, welcome to a robbery.”
Everyone fell silent, staring stupidly at the guard.
Eddy whirled around and stamped his foot on the ground. “The stupid decker shorted it.”
“Jenkins isn’t in on it?” said the guard who opened the door.
“He asked me why we were slowing down,” the young guard told him. “He didn’t have a clue.”
Peter looked at Jenkins, his heart going out in sympathy to the man. Jenkins sat on a crate, silent, confused not only at the robbery, but at a robbery in which his partners were in on the heist.
“What do we do?” asked the young guard.
Eddy turned to Jenkins. “Listen-Listen. We’ve got a problem-problem here. I’d like to make you an offer.”
The man’s mouth moved, but he was too terrified to speak.
Go-Mo got out of the van and came over to Eddy. “We can’t trust this guy. Look at him.”
Eddy glanced first at Jenkins and then at the three other guards, obviously trying to gauge the expressions on their faces. Peter saw only a hardening of some kind of loyalty with Jenkins.
“How about we call it off?” Peter said.
Eddy gave him a look. The other guards looked at Jenkins.
Then Peter realized there was no way to call it off, not if Jenkins didn’t go along—he could tag the other guards. And if he did go along, there was no reason to call it off. The fear from earlier crawled up the inside of his skin to his chest, where it came to rest and gently fingered his heart.
Eddy stepped toward the three guards and ignored Jenkins fiercely; he cut Jenkins out of the universe.
Peter glanced at Jenkins and saw that the man had lost his place in the world. He took a half-step back into the harshly lit truck. He fingered his gun, but didn’t draw it. Behind him were the crates with the hides. Peter realized the man might well soon die so that Eddy could get those crates. In his mind Peter saw thick slugs ripping through flesh and muscle, the impact startling Jenkins’ body so much that it ceased to function.
As Eddy talked to the guards, Go-Mo pulled out his Uzi. “Drop the gun,” he told Jenkins. His face going slack, Jenkins placed his gun carefully on the floor of the truck.
Peter wondered why Jenkins’ just didn’t fake it. Why didn’t he just say he’d take some money and be quiet, and if he wanted to fink, he could do it later?
Maybe he couldn’t lie well, and was afraid everyone would know it was phony. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to lie. Maybe on the verge of death he didn’t want his last words to be a desperate act of cowardice.
“What do you want to do about this?” Eddy asked the guards. They didn’t look at each other. Peter sensed that they felt shamed in Jenkins’ presence.
Eddy took a step closer and lowered his voice. “Listen. There are are-are only a couple of choices here, none of them pleasant-pleasant. I’ll outline them so we can get on with it. We shut this guy down, or else the whole thing turns bloody.” His neck twitched violently.
Peter wondered if Eddy’s body was about to betray him. So many things all interacting, so many things that could wrong.
“I don’t know about killing Jenkins,” said the first guard.
“Do we have a choice?” said a second.
The third glared at Jenkins, as if the man had purposely hosed everything up. Then he said, “I don’t know—”
“I think your indecision speaks megabytes,” Go-Mo said, then suddenly his gun was up, a roar filling the air as blood sprayed up from the third guard’s chest. Peter felt a warm wave rush up his body. His face tightened and he thought he might scream.
“Down! Down!” Eddy shouted and he dove for the asphalt and worked his gun free. Peter found himself wanting to move, but unable to. Then the mobsters behind the crates started shooting wild automatic fire. Bullets slammed into the truck’s armored sides, their impact clattering harshly in Peter’s ears. Out of instinct he dove for the ground on the opposite side of the truck from the guards. Then he rolled under the vehicle, desperate for safety.
To his right Peter saw the feet of the two remaining guards outside the truck. They stood, the truck momentarily sheltering them from the thugs. Turning his head, he saw Go-Mo and Eddy on the ground, crawling for the van.
Then one of the guards took two steps toward the back edge of the truck. Peter heard the rapid fire of gunshots, and then saw Eddy’s right leg twitch violently.
Peter felt very warm and excited and angry. And he was so giddy with fear that a cry almost escaped his lips. He didn’t want to see Eddy in pain. Fighting his better judgement, he rolled to the edge of the truck, where he was suddenly looking up at the guards. Neither saw him—one was shooting, the other looking across the tarmac, searching for shelter, thinking about what to do next.
Peter raised his Predator II and fired twice at the guard shooting at Eddy. The gun sent a soft motion through his arm. The bullets pierced the guard’s pelvis just beneath his chest armor and ran up through his lungs. The man looked down at Peter for a moment, clearly surprised that his life would end this way, and then toppled over.
The second guard, startled for only a moment by the loud gunshots, turned his gun down toward Peter. With a frightened gasp, Peter rolled back under the truck. Slugs slammed the asphalt centimeters behind him. He just wanted to be home. Home with his father. Home with Eddy. Any home. Just home.
Then a roar of submachine gunfire went off. Peter turned his head and saw the last of the guards outside the truck fall to the ground, the man’s body twitching rapidly. Bullets had turned his face into a landscape of torn flesh and blood. Peter looked right and saw Go-Mo beside the van, his head pointed forward, a big smile on his face.
A silence fell over the scene, but Peter could not bring himself to crawl out from under the truck. He shook wildly, and it brought a flash-memory of waking up in a sweat the night his transformation had begun. He didn’t want to hear anymore shooting.
But it started again, this time from just above him. Jenkins was making his last stand.
Peter saw Go-Mo’s body hit the pavement, cut in half at the waist by intense automatic fire.
A panic gripped his stomach. Death didn’t seem as bad as the terrible violence that accompanied it.
He saw Eddy, his right leg bleeding, rolled under the van, safe for the moment.
The mobsters tried to move up, but Jenkins kept them back with a storm of bullets from the rear of the truck. One hood cried out in pain, and fell to the ground. When he tried to crawl back to the shelter of the crates, Jenkins fired into him again. The man uttered a terrible scream, then fell motionless. The other two hoods remained pinned down behind low rises in the ground.
Peter knew security might arrive soon. He also knew that as long as the guard lived, he himself might die. Eddy was down, the hoods trapped. He had to do something. His breathing quickened, and as soon as he noticed it, it got even faster. He really didn’t want to leave the safety beneath the truck, but he knew he had no choice. To make sure he didn’t get caught in random fire by the mobsters, he rolled out from under the van on the side with corpses. His hand accidentally touched the men’s blood, now thick on the pavement. Dizziness passed over him, but he shut his thoughts down and inched his way along the truck until he got to the back, his gun held out before him.
He peered around the back of the truck.
Nothing.
And then Jenkins put his head out the door and looked in the direction of the mobsters, the back of his head to Peter. Peter knew he should shoot now, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Jenkins apparently sensed something, for he turned his head suddenly and came face to face with Peter. Peter saw a thought in Jenkins’ eyes: he wanted to bring his gun around to shoot at Peter. He knew it was too late, but he would try.
Peter pulled the trigger of his pistol.
The Predator’s bullet slammed into Jenkins’ skull, shattering it, splattering the repository of the man’s personality and knowledge against the metal walls of the truck.
A white-hot flush of victory streamed through Peter. He looked at what had once been a man named Jenkins. He had won. Though he’d almost died, he’d fought and won.
Then Peter fell to his knees and, despite all his adrenaline-driven good cheer, became quite sick.