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Behold the Clown-Killer; viper, ghost, mistress of her art; rubs
out painted jesters from here to Timbuktu. With CK on the job,
it doesn't matter if the fool's playing a backyard birthday or
rain-dancing in the Chihuahuan desert, he's facing the final
curtain.
The
secret to her lethality? Special Forces and Pentaction
training? Yawn. Genius IQ and laser-keen
single-mindedness? Ho hum.
Proud winner of a billion-to-one glandular lottery, CK looks all
of nine years old. Give her pigtails, a banana-seat bike, and
an iPod, and the clown's down before he knows it.
What's she got against clowns, anyway? Childhood trauma, some
clown done her wrong? Could it have been--gasp--her own
father?
No.
It's just a day job. Await orders, stalk target, set plan,
deliver coup de grâce, then home to a little art moderne house
on the lake. Salmon or Thai for dinner tonight?
And
she cleans up real nice, a Venus in miniature. Two ex-husbands;
imagine their issues. Lovers; men, women, more issues. CK
takes it all in stride.
The
Lagoon sends her orders encoded in junk-mail; Publishers
Clearinghouse sweepstakes, pre-approved Visa applications, IKEA
catalogues--a name, a location:
Mister
Patches--the Saltspring Apple Festival. Tiggles--the
Meernbaum & Sons office picnic.
CK
has it all under control.
Until Bink.
#
Bink's a genuine riddle. Mismatched costume fished out of the
circus goodwill bin; the bottom half of a bear suit, matted,
stained fur, held up with suspenders. Silver lamé shirt on
top. His make-up, two white bands, one across the eyes like a
mask and the other over his mouth like a gag. Looks like he sat
face-first on a park bench with a 'Wet Paint' sign on it.
Even his fellow clowns don't know what to make of him. A
typical klatch: "What's he trying to be, anyway? Russian-fish
man?" "If only he didn't stink--eeyugh, cigarettes and
sweat socks." "And that shirt! Glitter is so over."
His
act stumps and enrages the civilians. "What did the embryonic
stem cell say to the Monkey-Pope?" he says, setting off a riot
the police have to hose down. He stuffs balloons with Scrabble
letters, makes loot bags out of old dictionaries, broken
Walkmans. Children cry, set fire to furniture. "This is the
worst birthday ever," one kid bawls, and he doesn't even live
here.
Bink rarely gets return business.
#
How
does the Lagoon choose CK's targets? She doesn't know, doesn't
particularly care. They pay handsomely and make sure to
disguise it as an inheritance, for tax purposes.
Orders in a Sharper Image catalogue, the sonic jewelry-cleaner
section: Bink--close surveillance.
Surveillance? That's different, but still a cinch.
She
finds him at a carny behind an abandoned K-Mart. Bink climbs a
ladder made of razor wire; kids get interested when his hands
and feet bleed. He tells a story of a two-headed creationist
who winds up frozen in the heart of an iceberg--and now waits
for global warming to set him free. The kids want more.
Parents drag them away, drive them straight to church in luxury
SUVs.
His
next gig's the opening of a new Fitness-Gym-World, at a
strip-mall off Highway 9. Unfathomable, the corporate mind,
hiring a clown for that.
Bink shows up with a rolling all-you-can-eat buffet and the room
fills with a rich, spicy smell. Obese civilians waddle forth
and chow down, joined by Fitness-Gym-World staff; soon realize
they're eating Snickers bars and jelly-beans deep-fried in
tempura batter.
They clamor for more.
In
the gym, Bink tries a treadmill, gazes up at the dreary bank of
TVs. He announces each fast-food commercial like a game show
host; he sings along to jingles, and accurately quotes National
Bureau of Health statistics. Management wants him removed from
the premises; civilians link arms to form a human shield, and
handcuff themselves to Nautilus machines in protest. Staffers
spontaneously confess to torture crimes in the Middle East.
Hidden in the crowd, CK marvels.
#
His
home residence is easily found; out by the train tracks, on a
street lined with rusted cars, a mossy bungalow. She rigs the
house with minicams and microphones.
Bink lives with an old woman, Grace; diabetic, blind. He fixes
her meals, reads mystery novels to her, watches lots of
Jeopardy with her, kisses her on the forehead when he tucks
her in at night.
He
tends the hummingbird feeders outside, describes the birds for
Grace, invents stories about their past lives. This one was a
real-estate broker, that one used to be a homeless man.
They're all birds now.
Background check on Grace: she lost everything to a mail-order
credit scam; savings, husband's pension.
Bink never changes into civilian clothes. Never uses a civilian
name. At the Seven-Eleven, nobody bats an eye when he walks in
to pick up aspirin and laundry detergent. At the local tavern,
pool sharks and drunks buy him drinks; Bink prefers bourbon, can
hold his liquor, and shoots a decent game when he isn't
clowning.
He
talks to them, tells them of the time that's coming. He says
the oldest trick in the book is the book itself, and it's going
up in smoke. "Abracadabra. Labels fall away like autumn
leaves. We'll be free."
CK,
watching at her monitors, finds herself riveted.
Sunny Saturday afternoon. Boating on the lake with her
girlfriend, CK finds herself thinking about him. The things he
says.
Just following orders, she insists.
#
She's in his house, his room--he's not home, Grace dozes in
front of the TV. CK's got a watery, bubbly feeling inside.
Dresser drawers, closet, empty. No bedside table. The bed;
clean, mismatched bedding. No pillow.
She's seen all this through the minicams. Why is she here? Why
the schoolgirl giddiness?
She
sits on the edge of the bed, stifles a laugh. Bink's harmless,
and the Lagoon just wants her to verify that. That must be it.
And when this is all over, when she's on a new assignment,
she'll attend Bink's performances. She'll applaud. She'll
introduce herself. She'll shoot pool with him. She'll buy
Grace a condo in the Canal District.
Bubbly feeling turns warm, and she wishes Bink could watch her,
the way she watches him.
#
He
says his name is Plucker, from the Lagoon, and she believes him;
the man's a cross between a Kansas City preacher and an Egyptian
mummy; black suit, lipless mouth, hands like scraggy roots.
They have tea in her living room. He takes his black. She
keeps cool, but cymbals keep crashing dead center in her brain.
"The Lagoon wants to know why Bink is still active," he drones.
They issued the kill order three days ago, in an Amway flier.
She's never felt so shot through, so caught unawares; she always
thought of intelligence as the capacity to avoid surprise, to
anticipate circumstances and compensate accordingly.
The
Lagoon believes she's been compromised with an atextual
scramble. New sublimbic technique. Prevents her from
perceiving Lagoon communications.
Plucker: "Clowns have been field-testing for years; it was
hoped Bink might lead you to their R&D people."
He
sucks his tea. Clink of cup on saucer.
"The Lagoon wants him neutralized. Immediately."
#
Her
Beretta weighs a ton, aimed point-blank at Bink's silver lamé
chest.
Warm feeling struggles inside. Her hands shake. Maybe some
damned technique's dictating her every move, her every thought,
even now.
Window in Bink's room lets in the sunset; pink sky between two
ramshackle houses across the street.
Bink sits on the bed, relaxed, even sanguine, hands folded in
his lap. He answers all her questions.
Yes, the clowns use subcognitive superliminals. Yes, she's been
infected with one of the latest. Temporary effect. Yes, his
mission had been to lure her out--he sounds apologetic.
"I
haven't turned you over," he says. "I want to help you."
Her
hand sweats on gunmetal. "Who's your supplier?"
#
Just another neo-colonial in the upscale Canal District, except
for the peeling paint, the tangled lawn, and the pervading
cheese-smell.
Inside, a repository of newspapers, magazines, pizza boxes,
flotsam, neatly stacked to the ceiling, blocking the windows.
Leftover floor space is a maze, smelling of dust and musk and
cigarettes.
"Careful," Bink says, takes her hand, "whole place is booby
trapped."
She
thrills at his touch, still doesn't know if the feeling's real
or programmed, keeps her gun trained on the small of his back.
And
here are the twins. Bink calls them 'resittes'; pale,
genderless, dressed in polyester. Obsessive compulsives, they
haven't left the house in years. Typical hoarding behavior.
Ignoring CK and Bink, they lounge on an old chesterfield and
chain-smoke. Standup ashtrays overflow.
They blink lazy amphibian eyes and she suppresses a shudder.
"The clowns and the Lagoon are so ancien régime," Bink
says, "they're still struggling over power. Predictable control
issue, one tyranny replaces another, ad infinitum."
He
turns to search through heaps of trash.
Suddenly, orders leap out at her from the newspapers:
Neutralize
resittes and Bink--escape trap door, basement.
A
flush of silent thanks--the atextual scramble's finally wearing
off. Finger steady on trigger. Still, it's just the Lagoon
yanking the leash now, isn't it?
Dammit, who makes up her mind?
Bink's revealed a vintage control panel, battleship gray, set
into the wall. He flips a switch and oval screens start warming
up.
"The resittes started ages ago, in advertising," he says.
"Nowadays, they develop all the nontext, want to make it a
heritable trait. The mitochondrial genome rejected it, so
they're targeting the X chromosome. Rhinovirus and bed lice as
vectors. Everyone ought to be immune from birth."
She's heard of hard-core evangelicals inserting the book of
Revelations into their greasy DNA. "Immune to what?" she asks.
Screens flicker to life. Bink turns control knobs.
"To
the oldest trick in the book," he says. "For tonight though,
we'll settle for a quick cleansing regimen." He hefts a can of
True-Value spray paint. Bearings rattle inside. "Referential
prophylactic. Once deployed, no Lagoon, no clowns, no labels.
That's why I sent the distress call. To both sides.
"The house is surrounded."
CK
looks into the screens: men sprint between squad cars and
armored vehicles, their vests stenciled with block letters:
SWAT, FBI, DEA, EPA, CDC, USPS.
#
The
assault is a deadly shambles: gunfire crackles, incendiary
devices explode, helicopters crash to the ground. Trenches are
dug and stocked with vermin. Executions for cowardice keep pace
with battlefield promotions.
The
resittes flop down from the couch, dig through newspapers like
naked mole rats. Adhesive secretion squeezes from every pore as
they wrap themselves in paper; in no time twin larvae twitch on
the parquet floor.
Bullets shatter windows, punch through newspaper, plunge into
Bink's sparkling chest. He collapses, burgundy blood seeping
between clutched fingers. She cries out, dives to his side.
His
grease paint glistens with sweat. "And there's no trap door in
the basement, by the way," he says, pressing the spray can into
her hand.
She
doesn't know what to do. She needs orders--and she hates
herself for it.
Upstairs, crash and stomp of footsteps, shouting; gorillas
running riot in the house.
Smoke creeps around a corner--the house is on fire.
The
room shudders, plaster dust falls from the ceiling, a landslide
of newspaper slams into her.
#
She's halfway up the chimney, squeezed in tight, eyes sting with
soot, knees and elbows bleeding, fingernails torn away. One
hand crushes an abandoned bird's nest, the other grips the spray
can. Lucky she found the fireplace. Reaching the roof should
be a cinch.
Sound is magnified in here; cannonshot, lion's roar, hurricanes
up above.
Who's giving the orders now?
She
might have a concussion, bleeding in the brain. Better get a CT
scan, once this is all over.
Getting hard to breathe, no space, no air, smoke fills the
chimney.
Now
the spray can quivers in her hand, bearings rattling inside. It
sprouts a cable, yards long, whipping back and forth, buzzing
and whining, a live wire.
Is
this thing on?
The
can wants out, almost slips away. She holds on tight and it
pulls her upwards, acceleration peeling her skin.
She
remembers now, harsh light and sound; her own birth in an
Econoline van, the passenger seat, the slap of hot vinyl against
her slippery face.
This must be the roof--if only she could see. Heat and noise,
the smell of cordite and gasoline. Men scream below, demanding
surrender, reinforcements, stronger narcotics. The spray can
shrills, wants to writhe out of her grip, off into orbit.
Yes, but does it work?
#
News teams fan out, piranha school of journalism. Neighbors:
"The twins? Kept to themselves." "Never thought they had a
meth lab up in the attic." "I heard they kept a little girl
prisoner." "Child prostitution." "One helluva night.
Sheriff's Department had to blow up every house within ten
blocks--so long as they get those terrorist bastards, it's okay
with me."
#
Days later, residents report graffiti that produces selective
amnesiac euphoria. "I forgot all about that celebrity
child-molestation scandal," says one witness. "It was bliss."
The neighborhood's blockaded, hazmat and psyche squads swoop in
for clean-up and reindoctrination.
Police take a girl into custody, approximately ten years of
age. She's been loitering around the ruins in the Canal
District, spray-painting obscenities on charred rubble. Says
she's looking for bear tracks.
- the end -
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