Gun Machine by Ellis Warren

Author:Ellis, Warren [Ellis, Warren]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Published: 2013-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

TALLOW TURNED the corner into Bat and Scarly’s office to be greeted by a large plastic Japanese robot on the bench waving its arms and shouting, “Say hello to my li’l frien’,” in an electronically processed voice as a small plastic penis repeatedly jabbed out from its groin on a short metal piston.

Bat emerged from behind the thing. “Don’t judge me,” he said. “I got bored.”

“You don’t have enough to do?” said Tallow, laying the three sandwiches on the bench beside the robot, which turned out to be wired into a flat cream-colored box sitting behind it.

“Hey, you never know when the future might need a giant Fuck You Robot wired to a hot-rodded motion detector. Also we got search results back on that ridiculous fucking flintlock.”

“What did you get?”

“Did you bring food?”

“You hate food.”

“The death bag has a mind of its own. Give me the food.”

“It’s on the bench. Talk to me.”

“There’s a reason why I set Fuck You Robot up.”

“Talk to me or I will shoot you.”

“Victim, Philip Thomas Lyman, resident of Rochester, New York. Funnily enough, he ran a security company, called Varangian. Worked out well for him then. He died in Midtown while on a business trip.”

Tallow picked up one of the sandwiches and left the room, saying only, “I’ll be downstairs.”

Tallow paced around the emulation, eating his sandwich without tasting it, studying the fake room from outside, testing structures in his mind. Foundations of fact, scaffolding of speculation. Swapping out rods and plates, reassembling what he knew and what he suspected in different configurations. He finished the sandwich and tossed the wrapper, walking to the table. He pulled a couple of leaves off the tobacco plant, tore them up until the pieces were too small for his fingers to manipulate, and dropped them in the mortar. Tallow smashed the pieces with the pestle, hurriedly, still thinking, wanting to get this done. The oils released by the leaves tickled his nose. The scent wasn’t right. He pushed the pieces out into the tin tray, tipped the tray, took his new lighter, and ignited them, waving and working the flame until the smashed green matter began to smoke.

He carried the tray over to the emulation and laid it down in the middle. The smoke rose. It climbed and twisted like a thin dark tree, and as it passed Tallow, he pushed curls of it up toward the ceiling with his fingertips, and he knew.

Tallow stood in the smoke, and inhaled it, and the scent was close to right, close to the dominant note he’d detected in the apartment on Pearl, and he slowly pivoted around and saw the guns wrapping around the room, forming shapes and partings for future shapes but wrapping, turning, revolving, and flowing around the apartment walls and over the floors.

Tallow knew that he’d met the man who’d fired all these guns.

“What are you doing, John?” asked Scarly. Again, he hadn’t heard the elevator, and it felt like a warning: Be in the world. Don’t get caught.

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