Fish Swim in the Lake

Part 7.2 | A torrent of vegetable words

"I guess the next question," alphaDana said, turning her head but not her body, slowly, as though she too were suppressed by gravity, "the next question is whether you're as stupid as you look."

The mentech pulled in the corners of his mouth. His mouth gapped open and shut and open. It hung open like summer curtains. He stuck the end of the blue bottle between his teeth and wrenched the top off of it.

He said, "it takes a lot of work to look this dumb," and pushed out a jagged laugh. "If I were smart nobody would trust me. If I'm dumb they think, a few nallars here and there, a driver's license, a girl they've hardly used yet, maybe ah-ah-ah--" He shook, he breathed too much. "You, you, I, they--"

"He, she, it," alphaDana said viciously. She half-raised her hand. "Vas told his now you tell yours. You arranged this, didn't you? You wanted us to compare notes?"

"I I I..."

"Did you mean to kill Tony, Colin?"

"No! No! To steal his car! I knew you could drive or I can drive Vlad taught me to drive but I used a waver! Not a gun! I swear I didn't know I didn't know it would kill him! Please," he howled, grabbing alphaDana, sobbing into her shoulder, "I never killed anyone before. I never meant to kill him."

alphaDana tapped his back with her palm. "Yeah," she said. "I know." Nemoros slammed back against the wall with his shirt scorched black and peeling away from his raw chest. Her partigun later shown to be one of the point six percent that malfunctioned by functioning too well. She was exonerated just before she ran out of money.

"You want some water? Drugs?"

"Yeah." He sat down on the edge of the bed. alphaDana picked up the drug kit and offered the open box to him. "I'll call room service for ice," she said.

Colin picked up the antigravity drug skinjector and alphaDana said, "not that, those are for Vas. Try the purple blowtube in the side pocket." She turned away to pour some water and turned back to see him still staring. "What?"

"This," he said, holding up the skinjector and carefully setting down the rest of the kit. "This is one of ours. I mean, it's one of Vlad's. It's fake."

Posted by gtaylor at May 21, 2002 08:39 AM