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  BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY DAMIEN BRODERICK

  Chained to the Alien: The Best of ASFR: Australian SF Review (Second Series) [Editor]

  Climbing Mount Implausible: The Evolution of a Science Fiction Writer

  Embarrass My Dog: The Way We Were, the Things We Thought

  Ferocious Minds: Polymathy and the New Enlightenment

  Human’s Burden: A Science Fiction Novel (with Rory Barnes)

  I’m Dying Here: A Comedy of Bad Manners (with Rory Barnes)

  Post Mortal Syndrome: A Science Fiction Novel (with Barbara Lamar)

  Skiffy and Mimesis: More Best of ASFR: Australian SF Review (Second Series) [Editor]

  Unleashing the Strange: Twenty-First Century Science Fiction Literature

  Warriors of the Tao: The Best of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature [Editor with Van Ikin]

  x, y, z, t: Dimensions of Science Fiction

  Zones: A Science Fiction Novel (with Rory Barnes)

  BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY RORY BARNES

  The Dragon Raft: A Young Adult Novel

  Human’s Burden: A Science Fiction Novel (with Damien Broderick)

  I’m Dying Here: A Comedy of Bad Manners (with Damien Broderick)

  Space Junk: A Science Fiction Novel

  Zones: A Science Fiction Novel (with Damien Broderick)

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2009 by Damien Broderick & Rory Barnes

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  To Pam Sargent and George Zebrowski—D.B.

  And to Wainwright’s ghost—R.B.

  PART 1

  I was running a nice little earner called Feng Shui Solutions when my past caught up with me. I’d hung my shingle on an ornate free-standing Victorian mortgage, not mine, in Parkville—close enough to the university for academic respectability and not so close to the zoo that the lion stink annoyed the clients. The cast iron door knocker knocked. I wasn’t expecting a client so I’d left off my Knights of Bushido kimono, but I was fucked if I was going to climb out of my jeans just to open the door.

  “Mr. Purdue?”

  My caller had seen better days, but she’d kept herself trim. I suspected twice weekly workouts at the gym, which is as much as I can be bothered with myself these days, and twice-yearly dry-outs at the fat farm.

  “At your service.”

  “Sharon Lesser. I have an appointment for eight-thirty?”

  I blinked. Something troubled me but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then again I’ve had a few blows to the head in my time. “I believe that’s for tomorrow.” One of the drawbacks of doing your own secretarial. “But come in, Mrs. Lesser.”

  “Call me Share. No, definitely this evening, yesterday was my bridge night and that’s been Thursday for two years.”

  I helped her off with her fur. It was real, minimal entry wound, no exit. I hung the coat myself. The upside of doing such menial tasks is no nosy secretary, no secretarial wages either. We went into the Seminar Room, and I was pleased to see that Sharon Lesser was not intimidated by my bulk. Some women are. I don’t know, some of them say they like a bit of brawn to go with the deeply sensitive gaze and readiness to listen but plenty shy away.

  A decade and a half earlier I’d have been dismissed with a curt glance: the angular Vegan-diet poet type that only rangy Vegan diet women and cooing butterballs favor. Eighteen months in a boutique prison outside Seattle had made a man of me: ten hours daily of weights work and my heaped handful of vitamins. Anyone can get heroin and blow in jail, it’s the common currency, but ste­roids and HGH are at a premium. It made me shudder, sometimes, recalling what I’d had to pay for my supply. But beefy crims are less choosy than good looking women. Supply never outstripped demand. After a year I was able to set my own terms, and when they offered me parole for the final six months I carefully beat the shit out of my original supplier and remained where I wanted to be, full gym facilities and three good fattening meals a day, with­out the fat.

  Share avoided the jumbo House of Orient beanbags, settled her­self into the big Franco Cozzo faux leather armchair and regarded me with satisfaction, I was what she wanted. My clients are gull­ible fuckwits, obviously, but Vinnie would have looked this one over and muttered from the corner of his toothless mouth, “Well stocked hope chest her Mum left her.” But then Vinnie’s a seventy-five-year-old alky, and I have no idea what he’s talking about most of the time.

  “I’ve been reading in New Idea about this feng shui,” she said. I raised one hand, smiled with capped teeth. “That’s fong shway, Share.”

  She wasn’t flustered. “Oh, is that how you say it?”

  She crossed her legs. Share was on the wrong side of forty and the gym was battling the crème caramels, but I appreciated the re­sult. Something noisy happened in the street, like a pallet of bricks being dropped from the second floor. Share leaned forward and started to say something else when the front door, visible through the arch of the Seminar Room, slowly opened. The blood drained from my face, seeking refuge from terrible things. The door was triply-dead bolted with a fail-safed electronic controller, fitted into a sturdy frame. Nobody else had the key code.

  The door bent open in the middle, like a soufflé folding down with a sigh when you open the oven too soon. I grabbed Sharon Lesser and shoved her under the big desk at the far end of the Seminar Room. She squealed and then I jumped across the room looking this way and that. I knew there wasn’t a gun conveniently in the sideboard, I’m not totally stupid, it was the phone I was after. Once upon a time phones stayed where they were, anchored to the wall. The door stopped buckling, caught on the bolts at top and bottom. I could see one corner of the shiny steel bulbar of a Mack truck peeking around the edge. I found my cellphone, stabbed three letters. It started ringing. I slammed the phone against my ear.

  “Jesus, what? I’m busy.”

  “It’s Purdue, you fuckwit,” I yelled. “What bullshit is this?” “For Christ’s sake, are you still in there? Get the fuck out right now, Purdue.”

  “Bugger off, Mauricio, it’s only Thursday you cretin, I’ve got a customer with me. Client.”

  “Friday, Purdue. I got carefully laid plans, mate. Ready or not.” Mauricio gunned the Mack’s motor, the door screeched and buck­led some more. The door would hold, I was sure of that. The steel frame would hold too. But the frame was set into bricks and mor­tar—bricks and mortar from the century before last.

  “You’ll wake the neighbors,” I yelled into the phone.

  “Do something!” Share screamed from under the desk.

  A section of plaster above the door broke away from the wall and crashed into the room. The dust billowed up like farm soil in the Big El Nino Drought. Bricks cascaded down on either side of the frame. The ceiling was starting to go.

  Thank Christ for the inner-city outhouse!

  §

  In the century before last, when the bricks and mortar now rap­idly disintegrating around us were troweled expertly into place by skilled artisans, even the elegant homes of the colony’s robber barons were a bit light on for amenities. You could have all the cut-glass chandeliers you wanted hanging from the ceilings, the crystals bending the candlelight to softly illuminate the starched collars and deep cleavages arranged around the mahogany dining table, but the privy was still out the back. And it wasn’t connected to anything as sophisticated as a sewer. When the bucket was full, the night soil carter trundled his horse and dray down the purpose built cobbled lane and did what his title demanded: carted night soil. Which means that in this more refined and sewered century, the elegant piles of Parkville all have excellent rear access. Good for a quick getaw
ay. The real estate agents don’t make a song and dance about it, but it’s a selling point, especially for punters in my line of work.

  §

  My solid steel door-and-frame unit burst free of the surrounding walls with an unholy crash and shattered the jarrah floorboards of the hall. The Mack backed up a few meters and Mauricio planted his foot, the crazed fuck. The truck surged through the gap, taking out Share’s fur on the Queen Anne hall stand. The elephant’s foot umbrella tidy disappeared under a Dunlop High Rider. My rented hall was wide, wider than a Mack truck, but it narrowed once you got past the arched entrance to the Seminar Room. The truck hit the bottle-neck hard. The oak staircase to the right twisted and snapped. The repro Von Gerhard fell off the wall, glass splintering and skewering the paper. I didn’t stop to watch any more, I raced over to the desk, hauled Share out by her ankles and dragged her upright. She was screaming fit to burst, but there wasn’t much panic in her voice, it was all anger, distilled fury.

  “That was fucking sable, you arsehole.”

  “Not my fault,” I yelled.

  “The prick in the truck! I got that fucking thing in Paris France. Champs E fucking lysees. Five hundred thousand francs. Pure al­bino sable.”

  “Rabbit,” I said.

  Her reply was drowned by the howl of the engine as Mauricio backed up for the coup de grâce.

  “Come on, for Christ’s sake,” I yelled. “We’re outta here.”

  I dragged her towards the French doors that opened onto the courtyard. Of course they were shut, locked and secured by au­tomatic solenoids. A shock wave from the coup de grâce twisted them free. I gave the central strut the boot and we were through. Clouds of dust followed us like mustard gas billowing across the Somme. Broken glass and bricks started to rain down fairly heav­ily. As we ran, a pot plant took a direct hit. Poinsettia mysteriosa, I’d never liked it.

  §

  I got Share into the garage and bundled her over the passenger side into the Cobra. Luckily the top was down and we didn’t have to play ladies and gents with the doors. I bounded into the driver’s seat and grabbed the remote for the roller door into the lane.

  “Night soil forever,” I shouted at Share over the noise of a ma­jor collapse in the main house.

  “Start the bloody car you idiot.”

  I did. The turbo kicked in with a growl that would teach the Zoo’s farting lions a thing or two. But we had to wait intermi­nable seconds as the roller door slowly dragged itself off the floor. When the gap into the lane was almost high enough I gave Share her orders.

  “Keep your head down,” I yelled.

  Mauricio bounded into the garage, took a flying leap straight over the Cobra’s spoiler and into the luggage compartment behind the seats. I winced, thinking of the buttery leather jacket folded there.

  “This is a coupe, you arsehole,” I shouted. “No room for three. And watch the jacket.”

  “Drive, Purdue,” Mauricio yelled.

  “Jesus Christ, he’s got a gun,” Share shouted.

  “Of course he’s got a gun, nutters like him are always waving guns,” I said and put the pedal to the metal. The Cobra shot into the lane. I fishtailed it round to the north and tested the shockers on the cobbles.

  “Smooth as a baby’s,” I said.

  “Drive to a police station,” Share said insistently.

  “Do a circuit, Purdue,” Mauricio said, gesticulating with the gun over my shoulder. “Up Sydney Road, down Victoria Street, hang a lefty onto Melville and back to Royal Parade. That’ll give the cops enough time to arrive and set up shop. Who’s the tart?”

  “Sharon Lesser, meet Mauricio Cimino, my landlord.”

  “G’day Sharon,” Mauricio said.

  “She’s called Share,” I said. “Put the fucking heater away. And take that thing off your head. You’re making a spectacle of your­self. You ought to be ashamed.”

  Mauricio did as he was told, throwing the balaclava onto the tram tracks in Royal Parade and wriggling down into the luggage compartment, pulling his overalls off in a complicated series of maneuvers that bumped the front seats. We ground to a halt at a set of lights in Sydney Road. I turned round and had a good look at Mauricio. He was wearing a cashmere business suit, striped shirt with French cuffs and expensive opal cuff-links. Beside me Share started a search for the Cobra’s door handle, but the lights changed and we were away.

  “Just what are you pricks playing at?” Share asked in a tone not to be trifled with.

  “Fang Shooy,” Mauricio said.

  “It’s fong shway,” I said. “I keep telling you.”

  “This is some sort of joke?”

  “The alignment was all wrong,” Mauricio told her calmly. “Wrong ghosts kept coming down the hallway.”

  “What crap is this?”

  “Like Purdue says, feng shui,” he told her airily. “You’ve got to line up the hallway with the cosmic force fields, otherwise the daemons and ghouls and all those inhorse...inhorse....”

  “Inauspicious,” I said.

  “Yeah, all those inauspicious omens put the mockers on things.”

  She nodded at him over her shoulder. “Ah. You were realigning the house. With a truck.”

  “Reckon.”

  “You demolished it.”

  “Fuck.” Mauricio grinned, I could see him in the mirror. “I’ll have to start from scratch.”

  §

  For a while we drove in silence. Autumn evening was falling fast, although with the greenhouse effect it still felt like late summer. I flicked the Cobra’s lights on. A delightful shepherd’s sky hung over Tullamarine and the tram wires were etched against it like cosmic force fields. There was a lesson to be had in the wires, but I couldn’t quite put it into words. I sensed that the mood of quiet contemplation that had settled on the Cobra’s occupants required nothing as crass as speech to give it meaning.

  When we rejoined Royal Parade, Share finally said, “I take it that house was heritage-listed?”

  “Governor LaTrobe once kept a mistress there,” I said.

  She nodded. “So the Council wouldn’t even permit you to build a dog kennel in the backyard, let alone knock the whole place down and build....” She paused, trying to imagine the atrocity we must have planned. “Fifty-seven brick venereal units.”

  “Eighteen units,” Mauricio said, offended. “Top of the range. Master bedroom with en suite sauna and walk-in robes. En suites for the other two bedrooms. Studio/study with sun roof. Security entrances standard. All fittings stainless steel or owners’ choice if bought off of the plan. Which saves on stamp duty, which isn’t getting any less pricey these days, you mark my words.”

  “Good Christ. Criminal vandalism!”

  “Inner city resurgence. Breathing life into urban decay.”

  “Decay? Parkville?” She knew her real estate, did Share, as had everyone who’d prospered in Melbourne in the days of rampant financial lunacy and negative gearing. You might get more per square meter in patrician Toorak, but Parkville was still there near the top of the chart as a den of restorers and gold chip heritage bricks & mortar.

  “Structurally unsound, the way it is now.” My former landlord tutted at the public risk he’d just averted. “A menace to passers­by. Rise from the flames of destruction like a fee nix. That’s prog­ress, Share.”

  We were approaching the wrecked household, but the whole street was blocked by police cars, fire trucks, television crews. More flashing lights than sequins on a stripper’s bra. A uniformed constable tried to divert us, but I brandished my driver’s license complete with bona fide address.

  “I live here, officer.”

  “Shit, mate,” the cop said, taking in the number. “It’s your house. Be prepared for a shock.” He waved the Cobra up onto the footpath, where we left it standing with its emergency lights flash­ing, adding its twenty cents’ worth of glitter to the festivities. We proceeded on foot. The driving license got the three of us through two lines of tape with Do Not
Cross written in endless sequence. Outside the caved-in front fence and gate a detective sergeant I knew of old was talking to some guys in hard hats. He turned, recognized me.

  “Who the hell are you?” Detective Rebeiro said.

  “Occupier,” I said. “This is the landlord.”

  “Fuckinjesus H. Christ,” Mauricio screamed, “what cunt’s done this to me fuckin property there’s a fuckin Mack parked in the hall fuckin truckies they’re all on pills you know no fuckin sleep for forty-eight we’re talking fifty-six hours straight this cunt probably started in Brisbane and got lost south of Wang and thought he was parking the family wagon in the carport in fuckin Perth these guys are so off their faces I take it the cunt’s dead?”

  “There’s no one in there,” Rebeiro said.

  “Fuckin truck driving itself?”

  “Wonders never cease,” the cop said.

  §

  “You hungry?” I asked Share. A grinding noise told me the whole front of the mansion wanted to lie down for the night. Half the old places in the street had been turned into moderately upscale of­fices, used only during the day and for some occasional skulking at night, but those occupied by accountants on the rise and abortion­ists on the decline were flooded with light from open doors. Half a dozen people stood on the footpath, or nervously in doorways. “Are you mad? I couldn’t eat if I was starving.” That didn’t make much sense to me, and perhaps not even to her, because she added, “What I need’s a stiff drink. Oh, and you can write me out a check for the sable.”

  She took a deep breath for some more complaint, and I liked the effect.

  “You can be sure my insurers will have the matter in hand on Monday morning,” I said reassuringly. “I’d offer you a double malt, but unfortunately the drinks cabinet has half the staircase on it.” Something rumbled, and more crashings sounded inside. A pasty faced local from two doors up bared his teeth in the flash­ing blue light, unable to decide whether to go back inside his own place and hope for the best or run for his life. “Let’s retrieve Mau­ricio and get a bite to eat. I’ll stand you a drink.”