Billy sat behind his desk and laughed, tears running down his cheeks. Eddy joined in the mirth. Peter sat by, smiling weakly but he was certainly not jovial.
In telling Billy how the heist had gone, Eddy had, thankfully, left out the fact that Peter had gotten sick.
“Security heard the shots and were on their way, but we took the van and made our break through the gate we’d left open, just like-like-like we planned. That was it.”
Billy nodded approvingly. “Well, all hell broke loose, but you two came through. You got the bodies, you got the hides. Slick. Very slick.” He stood and held out his hand to Eddy. “Well done. Mr. Itami will be quite impressed. And you,” he said to Peter, “the men I sent you with won’t shut up about you. You are a true warrior.” He thrust out his hand, and Peter touched the fingertips, as he had decided would be his manner when asked to shake hands.
No, no, I’m not, Peter thought. But he kept quiet, because Billy’s smile made him want to let Billy think whatever Billy wanted to about him.
“And your leg?” Billy asked Eddy.
“Your magician fixed it right up-up.”
Billy started to laugh again. “He wasn’t bribed!” he cried out.
Eddy tittered, and then broke out into a full-blown guffaw.
Still laughing, Billy said, “He’s dead now.”
“Who?” asked Eddy, startled.
“The decker. We tracked him down.”
The two of them laughed loudly all over again.
Billy looked up at Peter. “You are so serious. I like that. I have a job for you. How’d you like to be my bodyguard?”
What?
“And you,” he said, turning to Eddy, “my lieutenant. Mr. Itami is letting me expand my crew, and I want you by my side. You’re crafty, you know the streets. I like you. And now! Let’s go celebrate.”
First they went to buy a suit for Peter, at Billy’s insistence. After piling into Billy’s big Nightsky limo, they sped off to a department store whose owner Billy knew well. A salesman and a tailor were waiting for them, but otherwise the place was empty of customers. In fact, the store was closed.
“You’re more than a muscleboy,” Billy said to Peter. “I know that much.”
While he talked, Billy paced a circle around Peter, eyeing him up and down. Peter knew that might have made other people nervous, but compared to his father’s indifferent, clinical eyes, this scrutiny was like being massaged by Thomas’ hands.
“I don’t want a bodyguard who merely knows how to fight,” Billy continued. “If a fight breaks out next to me, I’m already too near death. Anyone who would let that happen would be useless as a guard. No, your job is to protect me, but that means keeping anything from happening in the first place. A lot of this has to do with attitude. You shouldn’t have to pull a gun or throw a punch. You see anyone look at me the wrong way, you stare him back down. Got it?”
Peter looked into Billy’s face, and saw that the man really wanted to know if he got it. It wasn’t condescension, thinking Peter was too stupid to understand. He just wanted to check in with Peter. To connect.
Peter smiled. He couldn’t help himself. “Yes.”
The tailor said, “Give us an hour. Please.”
Billy turned to Peter. “All right with you?”
Peter smiled again, and looked down at the little tailor, a pure human. The man looked up at him, subtly pleading for Peter’s good grace. “Yes. All right.”
The man let out a sigh.
Peter decided he liked the way things were going.
When the suit was finished, Peter looked at himself in the mirror. He was still massive, but now, somehow legitimate. Adult. Human. Suddenly realizing he’d been slumping for months, he stood up taller and straighter. He wanted to show off his body in his new suit. His massive hands protruded from the dark sleeves, his toothy face rose from the collar, but it was all right. In a nearly perverse way there was something intriguing about him.
They piled back into a limo—a huge limo in which Peter could sit without having his knees up to his chin.
Billy gave instructions to the driver, and they were off.
Compared to the day’s earlier ill-events, riding in the car seemed like heaven. Peter settled deep into the soft upholstery. Billy opened a bar and offered him a drink, and Peter asked for a beer. He’d had only two drinks in his life, and he knew he had to be careful of losing control. But he wanted so much to relax, to just forget, just for a little while. Just a little bit.
The music was soft—something very old, classical, it was called—and it smacked of class. After living on the. streets and then in a roach-infested apartment for so long, Peter found Billy’s invitation into the lap of mobile luxury a tonic.
He closed his eyes, and for an instant he saw Jenkins’ ruined head. Then he opened his eyes, and everything was all right. Eddy was laughing with Billy, and even Peter found himself slipping into a smile.
“Ah, so the Profezzur can be happy!” Billy exclaimed. “Terrific.”
A thought slid through his mind, tentative at first, and then it nestled comfortably: He was finally safe because he’d killed Jenkins, and since Jenkins was dead, there was nothing to be done about it now. He would enjoy it all however he could.
The limo pulled up before a posh nightclub west of The Crew. Swirling arc lamps lit the sky and formed churning pillars of light.
“Just opened,” Billy said. “Caters to the new simsense technicians they’re housing out here.” He leaned forward to Peter. “Tonight’s your test. Let’s see how well you handle yourself.”
Peter slipped on his dopey grin. “Yes, sir, Billy.”
“Terrific. Spirits, you’re cute. But let me see a look. Something that will keep me safe.”
Peter tried to focus a threatening gaze. He knew he wasn’t quite pulling it off, and then he remembered how he’d felt knowing it was either Jenkins or him.
Billy smiled. “Very good. Let’s go.”
A long line of people stood outside the door. Eddy walked alongside Peter while Billy remained in the Nightsky. “Get the boss through. He’s important. Make the crowd know that.” Peter smirked at the line of small people waiting to get in. Suddenly his size and strength didn’t seem like clumsy liabilities. Billy had given him the authority to use his natural assets.
He walked briskly up to the line. The material of the suit felt wonderful against his skin; it was a uniform of respectability. The people in the line didn’t take long noticing the troll striding up to them. Fear jumped from one face to the next as people nudged one another. The crowd quickly parted…
…And revealed two heavy-set guards armed with stun batons. One of them spoke into the small head-mike that wound around to his mouth, asking for heavy back-up. The men eyed him, smiled at him, ready for a fight, and Peter remembered the police. He didn’t want to fight, he just wanted to be frightening. Suddenly the magic Billy had given him was gone. Fear ran through his body to his arms and into fingers. He wanted to make a fist, but couldn’t.
And Billy was beside him, bringing the magic back again. “These are my associates,” he said. “The Profezzur and Fast Eddy.”
The demeanor of the guards changed instantly. “Mr. Shaw! A pleasure. We didn’t know.”
“No problem!” And he shoved some bucks into their breast pockets. Both guards looked up at Peter, smiling and nodding. “Good evening, Profezzur! Sorry about the confusion. But you know, can’t be too careful.”
Was he blessed? Was Billy an angel from the Christian heaven, come down to surround him with holy comfort? Peter couldn’t remember being so well-treated.
Billy strode into the lobby of the club, with Peter staying close. He realized that he was holding his head high, swinging his arms confidently. Glaring, he scanned the crowd, warning all that Billy was under his protection.
And he under Billy’s.
They entered the dance area. Tables and booths ringed the dance floor at various levels. Colored lights spun around. They flashed. The music pounded. Somehow the deep tones rumbled through Peter’s flesh, pressing hard against the beat of his heart. It was almost like being on the verge of death, but more like living a different way.
A man in a leather jacket spotted Billy and rushed over. “Mr. Shaw! A pleasure. This way, please!” he shouted over the music.
The man led them up a flight of stairs and over to a circular table. The table offered perfect sight lines to everywhere in the club.
Billy and Eddy sat down. Peter thought that as a troll and bodyguard, he would spend the night standing. But then he saw two men struggling with a troll-sized reinforced chair. “Get outta the way!” they shouted at patrons whose tables were between them and Billy’s table.
Soon the chair was in place, and Peter slumped down into it.
“How’s it feel?” Billy shouted.
What could Peter say? It was a heavy metal chair, not particularly comfortable. But the fact that Billy asked him how it felt? That made the moment a treasured holo, an image he would carry around forever and savor whenever he needed to lift his spirits.
“Wiz!” Peter shouted back. “Wonderful!” He laughed joyously.
When had he last laughed like that—not because something was funny, but because the very act of being alive thrilled him so? Maybe he never had.
Peter looked to Billy and Eddy, who grinned wildly at one another and then looked back at Peter. His happiness amused them. And that was all right, too.
Months passed.
Policemen quickly learned Peter’s name, and treated him with respect. Women at nightclubs winked at him, and sometimes even brushed up against him. He knew it was all because of Billy, but he didn’t mind. It was better than the streets. It was better than his father’s house.
Peter got his own place, and Eddy got his.
Sometimes Peter was so enjoying being important that he let his research slip from his daily routine. But Eddy turned Wednesday night into Story Night, and every week he would show up with an armful of take-out Japanese, and insist that Peter tell him the things he had learned. Knowing that Eddy would show up on Wednesday night kept Peter working. Without ever mentioning it directly, Eddy always reminded Peter of his claim that he would become human again.
“Some genes are pleiotropic,” Peter began one night. “That is, one gene may affect many traits. I think the metahuman gene might be a pleiotropic. It would make sense. If the gene is there in the body, and the ‘magical environment’ activates it, then it could trigger subtler genetic shifts throughout the body. This way you wouldn’t have hundreds of thousands of triggers all waiting to go off in a person. In fact, many people who aren’t metahuman might have many metahuman genes, but over the centuries, their genetic branches lost the pleiotropic metahuman trigger. Even when the environment changed, they didn’t have the one gene needed to activate all the other genes.”
Eddy nodded his head, greedily slipping fried rice into his mouth.
“The idea, then, is that I’ve still got the same genes for eyes as when I was human, the same genes for arms, fingers…but the pleiotropic metahuman gene alters all of them just a bit. Still have eyes, but now they’re bigger and yellow. Still have skin, but now it’s gray-green and hard.
“The problem is, there’s no way to check this now. It’ll be years before work is finished on the metahuman genome.”
“Any way you can do it yourself?”
“Nope. No way. Way too big. I’m talking big machines, huge staffs. I’ll have to wait for other people to do it. Like I said, it’ll be years.”
Years passed.
The Itami gang’s power grew, and so did Billy’s position. As he rose, so did Eddy and Peter along with him.
“Peter, I need some wetwork done,” said Billy one afternoon.
Peter had had to kill three people in his job of defending Billy, but he’d never been ordered out to kill in cold blood. Each of those three deaths he’d justified as part of the game among mobsters. Everyone knew the rules going in, and everyone took his chances.
“Who?” Peter asked.
Peter thought he saw a glint of annoyance in Billy’s eyes, and then Billy became beatific and generous all over again. “Does it make a difference who?”
It did, or at least Peter thought it might, but all he said was, “No, Billy.”
“Good.”
It was early evening when Peter walked into Mick’s, a bar located in the midst of the Southside in an area under massive redevelopment. Mick’s was a hangout for pure-human construction workers. Crude four-leaf clovers carved from sheet metal hung on the walls.
O’Malley sat in the middle of the bar, surrounded by his mobster cronies. He controlled the construction industry in Chicago. There were no unions anymore, but workers could still stage slow-downs, still arrange accidents. Itami was tired of slow-downs, tired of accidents. He needed the construction finished in certain neighborhoods so that he could start dumping some of the expensive illegal simsense chips he’d invested in. He wanted the rich to have new homes.
A couple of thick, stocky men slid off their stools and stared at Peter. One or two grinned. They thought they were about to have a good time with a stupid troll.
Nope. Billy was on Peter’s side.
Peter whipped out his Uzi and shot it down the length of the bar into O’Malley. The fat Irishman’s belly ripped open, and his face betrayed surprise for just a moment.
Men rushed at Peter, guns were drawn, but Peter was suddenly invisible, vanished into thin air.
He rushed for the door, leaving mass confusion behind.
Eddy had the Tornado running. He popped the back door open and Peter jumped inside, spreading out flat along the passenger seat.
The mage sitting in the front seat next to Eddy leaned back as Eddy peeled the Tornado out into the street. Peter caught a reflection of himself in the mage’s silver eyes; cybernetic eyes containing microtronics that mimicked the heat-sensing capabilities of Peter’s own natural eyes. Through the window, the dimness of the bar held no secrets from a mage who could see in the dark. “How’d it go?”
The question caught Peter off guard. Yes, O’Malley was dead. So it went well. But another life stopped? Good?
He remembered Eddy’s warning: Crime isn’t an introspective profession.
“He’s dead.”
Meanwhile, Peter was following the research. Markel found the metahuman gene sequence in unborn fetuses. Theories supporting the idea that metahuman genes had always been in people were strengthened.
His father was hired away from the U. of C. by a prominent biotech firm based in Chicago. Landsgate was hired by Northwestern University. Peter thought about calling Dr. Landsgate, but couldn’t think of what he would say. He simply wanted contact with his childhood friend, like an open channel with neither party talking.
Peter passed through his mid-twenties. He was studying and learning about the secrets of the body and how it lived. He was also learning how to kill it. His life continued along his twin path, a double helix of biology and murder twining inextricably together.
Wednesday night.
“You-you-you all right?” Eddy was chewing a mouthful of squid.
“Yeah. I was just thinking…”
“That’s the Profezzur.”
“I was just… When a sperm and an egg meet—that’s just two cells. Two little cells. But they’ve got all the information for a lifetime packed into them. The sperm’s got twenty-three chromosomes. The egg has twenty-three. Each set of chromosomes was randomly picked for each egg and each sperm.
“And then, when the egg and the sperm meet, their meeting is also random. The egg the woman is carrying—each month a new egg is available for fertilization. What will the chromosome set be for the moment of conception? And the sperm that propel themselves to the egg—there are countless possibilities contained in all the sperm a man produces. Which set will reach the egg?”
Eddy waited a moment, then asked, “And?”
“It’s just so random. There’s no control.”
“And?”
“It bothers me. That’s all.”
Eddy chewed his food slowly. Peter traced a figure on the table with his finger.
“And killing somebody,” Peter said suddenly, softly. “That’s control. I walk in with a gun and suddenly I’m master of that man’s life. I stop his life. I do that. I choose to do that. It’s like clockwork. You’re in the car. We kill one man after another, and it’s all so planned, precise.”
“That’s why we’re still alive.”
“But that’s what bothers me. Why is the taking of life more comprehensible than the making of it? We go to kill a man…or two corps send in strike teams against each other. They sit around with maps and diagrams and figure out who will do what. They make a plan, then they implement the plan, and they go.”
“But things can still go wrong. Things do go wrong. The hide job at O’Hare—”
“But…” Peter began, and then stopped. “No. You’re right. It is all so… But killing feels more in control.”
“More in control than what?”
“Than…I don’t know… Just living…”
Peter hired people to gather research from corps and universities. Dozens of sources followed the trail of the metahuman genes, and Peter had illegal feelers out to all of them. He took the research and rolled it around in his mind.
His own notes grew more and more extensive. He had boxes stuffed with optical chips, generating enough material to keep a team of grad slaves busy for years.
He tried not to learn anything about his father.
It wasn’t hard to avoid William Clarris. As the years passed, corporations had become more and more like armed camps, often hidden away, often as secretive as lone, mad, hermetic mages.
It was Wednesday, and Eddy arrived.
“Good.” Peter rushed to the table and cleared away some space. “I just got some work in from Cal Tech. Spectacular.” He cracked open one of the carry-out cartons. “There are some genes called operator genes. They make the structural genes attached to them go ‘on.’
“These genes can be blocked by repressor proteins. These repressors are always in the cell, and if they attach to the operator gene, the operator is turned off. Then the structural genes are turned off. The DNA can’t transcribe to the RNA anymore, and it’s as if the DNA sequence wasn’t there.”
“Uh-huh,” said Eddy. “If the stuff, the repressor, is always in the cell, how can the gene be ‘on’?”
“Wonderful question. Like this: the repressor gene can be bound by other chemicals. If the repressor is bound, it can’t bind the operator.
“About eighty years ago some French biologists did some work with Escherichia coli, a bacteria. Lactose is what controlled the genes, and the gene operator worked the production of digestive enzymes.
“When the cell digested lactose, it reduced the amount of lactose in the cell. When the amount of lactose was too small to inactivate the repressor, the repressor bound to the operator and switched it off. The transcription of the genes stopped, and the cell stopped making digestive enzymes, which was good, since the enzymes weren’t needed. If you were to dump one of these Escherichia things into a vat of lactose…”
“All of the genes would go on…”
“And stay on…”
“As if the environment had changed.”
“Like the magic.”
“Exactly. But that was a bacterial cell. A eucaryotic cell, like the ones we have, with nuclei and many chromosomes, is much more complicated. Researchers have been working for decades to get a better understanding of the controllers.
“But I hear that Simpson at Cal Tech has come up with a model of muscle growth based on operator and regulator genes. How muscle growth changes according to the foods given to it.”
“Going to get the chips?”
Peter grinned with embarrassment. “Yeah.”
At The Crew, Billy told Peter, “I’ve got another job,” and his smile said he knew Peter would do the job and do it wonderfully.
At Billy’s office, he never thought of people as full-blown expressions of amazingly long strings of deoxyribonucleic acid. They were packages of self-contained meat; things to be taken care of.
“Who?” Peter asked, as always with Billy, happy for the approval and a chance to belong.
And one day, never thinking it would happen so quickly, Peter was twenty-eight years old.