From: cs92jgo@brunel.ac.uk (Jus T. Ego)
Subject: Hide in a Cherry-Tree
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 14:34:42 GMT


OK, I've been out of it for a while, but I'm back.

I spent a while getting the feel of this one right.

Let me know if it works, ok?

All and any comments appreciated.

Copyright to J.G.Otto 1993

(I'll apologise now to the "post modernistic punctation fiends", but this story
only uses about two colons... =D )

Hide in a Cherry-Tree...
------------------------

Grey and acidic, the snow was crisp in sub-zero London.

The quiet crunch of my designer trainers drifted in the fluttering air. The
snow flakes filled the frozen street.

Downtown was so quiet, had I not been there I wouldn't have believed it.
December was dying with the old year, and January was waiting in the wings.

Not a soul wandered the icy precinct. Except for me, of course.

An absurd figure, walking hunched up, fighting his way through the
crystallizing chemicals falling from the God-less sky.

My ludicrously expensive leather bomber-jacket, stained by the relentless
deluge of corrosives, steamed almost invisibly. The heated sacks of gel warmed
the lining. No such protection existed for my legs, and black Nico jeans lay
against shivering goose-pimples.

Neon green targeting rings flitted across the inside of my sunglasses. The
velocity-reaction ring trailing behind the crosshairs of my focus. Endlessly
forming and re-forming the square reticle that marked a kill. The fingerless
leather gloves buzzed at my palms, warm within my jacket pockets.

I formed the mental command to cancel the targetter.

It had been a while since I had last used the shades and gloves, and I was out
of practice. Tonight I had perfect aim. I was ambidextrous, and could judge
distances up to a kilometre with an accuracy of a few centimetres. It was good
to know that I wouldn't be going down without a hell of a fight.

The cable from the shades rubbed irritatingly under my collar, just at the
point it was plugged into my skull jack.

A low hum rose from behind the shops to my left, and I ducked into a doorway.
The skybus drummed overhead for a moment, and then flew on.

All the time I wore my heated jacket, I left an unmistakable infra-red image
on the snow.

"How do elephants hide in cherry-trees?"

The joke popped insanely into my head.

They paint their balls red, I completed it sub-consciously.

It was one of Raid's jokes. Raid! My God. I had to get back quickly.

--

When you haven't worn a gun for a while, it takes time to re-adjust to the
sheer weight. Walking in time with the gun on my hip, and not over-balancing
proved difficult and I transferred it to a shoulder holster.

I reached my first destination, the tube station.

Years back, the Government had closed the stations, stopped the trains and
boarded up the entrances to the whole network. At the time they had planned to
do something with the miles and miles of tunnels that lay under the
megalopolis. Plans change, they get postponed.

It was quite soon after the closures, that the homeless of London moved down
there, the ideal rabbit-warren of tunnels for a nomadic tribe of derelicts.

I ducked through the gap between the spaced planks of wood, and into the dim
light of the ticket hall. If I was lucky, there would be a train quite soon.
Through a crumbling plaster arch, I went, picking my way around the scavenged
turnstiles. Steps led me to the dark platform.

Public transport died as a concept long before the tube was shut down. I was
told that it was going out even before it reached it's peak efficiency with
the Europe-Integration. The multi-nationals ran the skybus. The
multi-nationals ran the airports. The multi-nationals ran the off world
colonies. You've probably got the idea by now.

There existed only one way to travel around the city without being noticed,
the AI-trains of the tube network. Repaired and maintained by the formerly
homeless of London, it provided a constant income from the quiet side of
society.

Naturally prices were exorbitant, but very little alternative existed. There
were rumours of its inefficiency. There were comments about its safety record.
Multi-nationals and Government alike tried to put the trains out of business,
and failed. Sure there were times when the stories of psychotic trains seemed
realistic, but it was currently the safest method of travel.

"Why did the chicken cross the railway line?"

Fuck off, I snapped, I'm still angry with you.

"For the adrenalin rush."

Raid jokes were never very funny.

"Why did the elephant cross the railway line?"

It was stapled to the chicken.

"Get real!", the memory of Raid's voice gloated, "How many fucking elephants
have you seen in tube stations?"

The thought that he might be alive, kept me moving.

The ticket collector shuffled out from his office. A scruffy tramp. He wore a
thread-bare scarf over his British Rail jacket, obtained from somewhere. I
gave him a pre-arranged roll of notes for the ticket, and passed him a
miniature of vodka. It was warm from where it had been sat in my jacket, but
he nodded gratefully.

The platform itself was as cold as the street above. They saw no point in
heating the tunnels themselves, it was just a waste of electricity.

I waited silently for the train, sat upon a cold bench.

--

"Don't mess around with them", I warned.

Raid grinned his usual unconcerned rictus. He was too wrapped up in how cool
it would be to fuck around inside a multi-national and get paid for it.

"Don't worry, little brother. I'm not gonna do anything stupid. All I've got
to do is find a couple of backdoors and I get a hundred thousand in cash!"

"Raid", I snapped. I was always the most excitable one. "At least tell me
which fucking company you're working for."

He grinned again, naive confidence.

"What, and have you looking over my shoulder the whole time? No thanks, bro.
Lighten up. I can look after myself."

--

The gun was in my hand even before I was fully awake. The kill reticle framed
his shocked face, and my other hand was around his throat, choking him.

It was the ticket collector.

I released him, and hid the gun back under my jacket.

"I'm... sorry", I managed.

"Your train is here", he said. His voice was quiet, and sounded much younger
than his obvious sixty or seventy years. His hand was motioning towards a
motionless train, sat in front of me.

The train was silver-grey, the colour of cigarette ash, and shaped identically
to the tunnel. Cracked leather seats filled the empty carriages, and faded
advertisements covered the ceiling.

I got up, my muscles felt tight and ached whether I used them or not. I
wondered how long I had been asleep.

"Nearly an hour", the ticket collector said. His brow was furrowed with what
looked like anger, but his eyes shone with pity. He recognised a man on the
run. He had seen it all before, and would see it again.

He handed me back my tiny bottle of vodka. It had been opened, but none of it
had gone.

I nodded my thanks, and hurried on the train. As it pulled off from the
station, I turned to look back at him, but he was gone.

--

The train was dirty but clear of any litter. I staggered against the
acceleration of the train, and fell awkwardly into a seat. As I straightened
in my seat, the bottle slipped from in my jacket, and fell on the floor.

"Damn."

The bottle broke, and the vodka splashed over the floor, some of it dotted up
my jeans. I watched the precious drink trickle down the grooves, towards the
back of the train, with a fatalistic attitude.

It began to worry me that I was dwelling over the tiny loss. Raid was most
probably dead, and all I could think about was a drink. I pulled out my gun
and checked it.

"London Underground and Public Transport politely request that their customers
do not carry weapons."

The voice permeated through the speakers around the carriage but appeared to
come from somewhere in front of me. The monitor ahead of me was a standard
seventeen inch screen which hung from the roof.

It was showing a strobing picture of a gun surrounded by a red circle. I put
the gun back into my pocket and the image disappeared. Obviously the body scan
wasn't operational or I wouldn't have been allowed on the train. The monitor
returned to displaying a picture of cycling fractal pictures.

Instead of giving the trains a human appearance, the designers gave each train
a fractal equation, which it constantly evaluated with differing parameters.
This gave the AI something to think about, the passengers something to watch
and it de-humanised the vehicle.

"I apologise, sir", the train said. "My sensors detected that you were
carrying a gun. I see now that this is not true, and I am sorry."

Force of habit drove me to nod acceptance to the monitor.

"Thank you, sir. I would however ask you to be more careful with your
beverages. A buffer car is at the front of this train, and is closed until
November."

I laughed and bent down to scratch my itching leg. The trains worked, but
there were still a few bugs in their operating system.

The journey wasn't going to be quick, so I lay down on the sideways facing
seat, and fell asleep.

--

The light burst in on me suddenly. In the same way it always does, when
someone else wakes me.

I coughed to clear my throat and bent to claw at my itching leg. I coughed
again, but there was still something wrong. There was a strange consistency
and temperature to the air.

"Please leave the carriage, sir."

A small fire was burning at one end of the carriage, and creeping towards me,
along the line of the dried vodka.

The train had stopped at an unused station.

"Please leave the carriage, sir. My servicing robots are not designed to
accommodate a chemical fire."

I rose swiftly but calmly and went to walk out through the door, remembering
the fire drill for our apartment block. My leg couldn't hold my weight, and I
almost fell into the small fire.

It burned and itched with malevolent fury and I rolled onto my side to take it
away from contact with the floor. Scratching and tearing with my hands at the
unbearable itching.

"Please leave the carriage, sir. I am unable to receive any response from my
servicing robots."

While I lay there, in a confined but painful agony, the fire rose towards the
ceiling, changing from quiet blue to angry yellow. Black smoke began to fill
the carriage. A piercing whine, emitted from the air conditioning, reached a
screaming crescendo filtering air faster than it was designed to cope with.

I grabbed the seat above me and dragged myself to the open doors, coughing.

"Please leave the carriage, sir. I cannot permit you to remain aboard this
train any longer."

Somehow, I found myself lying on the station. The carriage was slowly
submerging under a layer of internally-pumped foam. The wheels began turning
again, and the train sped from the station, trailing smoke.

My pen-knife blade proved sharp enough to cut into my jeans, and I sliced away
an expensive section of the lower leg.

The flesh underneath wasn't red, but a sort of plum colour. Large patches of
blisters were dotted up and down my shin and calf, and they itched with a
venom.

My scratching burst one of the larger blisters, and I screamed at the pain.
The temperature of my skin seemed to be at about boiling point, the blood felt
almost cool against the angry sores.

The marks forming on my leg were already the size of garden peas and growing.
It wasn't a burn I'd received from the fire. My leg had begun to itch soon
after I had gone on the train. Just after I'd dropped the bottle.

The bottle was open, but none had been missing. I looked at the pattern of the
blisters on my shin. They had found me. The ticket collector had been an
assassin, and an armed squad was probably waiting for me at the other end, to
pick up the body.

I had no way of knowing where I was, and how long I had.

The time for hiding was over. I had to run.

--

"Well, that was hard", Raid voice dripped with sarcasm.

He disentangled the lead from his arm, and removed the cyber-jack. He glared
at me as he wound the lead around his hand.

"And I managed it all myself."

He was still bitter. Still angry that I hadn't trusted him enough to believe
him capable for a job of this nature.

"Ok, I'm sorry Raid", I apologised. "I guess I should have given you a little
more credit."

He grinned stupidly.

"That's Ok, little bro. We all make mistakes."

"You were my mother's."

He laughed. We hugged, and all was forgiven.

"No problems?", I asked.

His eyes narrowed briefly, suspiciously. Then he took my question as genuine
concern, and replied.

"None, I just set the Bloodhound on the first patch I found."

I was impressed. The Bloodhound was a difficult program to use. It was quite
possibly the greatest mantrap program ever written. The problem was getting it
to ignore the things you didn't want it to notice.

"Very impressive", I told him. "I always have trouble getting the exceptions
set up."

"Oh, that's ok. I didn't use any", he brushed the comment aside.

My heart must have stopped, and all colour must have drained from my face.

"What corp were you working for?", I demanded.

--

The snow was cold and it soothed the itching. I packed it on thickly, not
worried about the cleanliness of the snow itself.

The snow flurry appeared to have stopped now. Unfortunate, because I could use
something to cover my tracks. I was still unable to walk, and my concentration
was divided between the eternal itching of my blistered skin and my current
predicament. I shrugged out of my jacket. It was almost impossible to move
while wearing it, it was so heavy.

I didn't recognise this part of town.

I decided to try and move somewhere away from the station. They would find the
train soon, and not find my body. I couldn't stand, so I had to half crawl,
half drag myself through the snow.

My hands stung, and the snow was getting inside my clothes, burning cold.

The track I was leaving was unmissable. I could only hope that they didn't
stop at the same station. Maybe the train had travelled several stations
before it burnt out.

My hands were shaking now. I was so cold. So cold.

How far I had crawled I couldn't tell. It may have been miles, it may have
been a few hundred metres. Whatever. It didn't matter. I didn't care. I didn't
even mind being cold, anymore.

The pain of my leg was still there, but it had dulled slightly. It was a
detached pain, almost like someone else was suffering. Someone else was back
down there, lying in the snow, cold and in agony, while I was perfectly safe.
Perfectly comfortable where I was.

I didn't need to move around, I could just lie there and go to sleep.

Sleep was such a good idea. Such a good idea.

"Poor bastard."

There was a figure standing next to huddled form on the ground. He shook the
semi-conscious bundle.

"He's dying of exposure, already. Christ. If he'd drunk the cocktail we'd
prepared, at least it would have been quick."

"Hurry up", another voice spat.

"Poor bastard. Did you know that his brother shopped them both?"

"Just shoot the fucker, and let's get out of here."

"Didn't mean to, apparently. He was just incompetent."

The figure drew a gun from his jacket and pointed it at the fallen person.
Strangely I could see a green target on his face. A green neon square with a
tiny cross at the centre. The other man came out from the shadows to stand
beside the first.

"Just get on with it."

There was something I had to remember. I had to think the right way... that
was it. A second green target floated into view. This one drifted over to the
second man.

Two confirmed kills, the targetter chirped. Now why did I do that?

"Do it now", the second man urged. "Someone may see us."

I had to think of The Word. Just one word. What was it?

"Yeah ok", the first man sighed, and began to squeeze the trigger.

Kill.

Two gun shots.

The targetter cancelled out.

"What the loudest noise in Africa?", Raid joked.

I don't know, but I think it's a giraffe eating cherries.

I laughed. It was quite funny: For one of Raid's jokes.



--

_Jus T. Ego

"Some people just won't listen to reason, until an elephant comes calling"