Zephyr Dorsey

“Visitors to the Abbey” from Coma Domo

“Ah, look at these beauties, Brother Affino. Aren’t they magnificent?”

“They are peapods, Brother Phil,” responded Affino, tugging his kimono’s hem away from the mud. “I doubt a peapod could ever to rise to the level of magnificence.”

I stood, the folds of my own kimono falling over my knees to my sandaled feet. I gestured around us. “Isn’t it marvelous to be in the garden on a day like today? The sun shining, the ground moist with recent rain, the good Earth teeming with life and the bounty of nature.”

Affino swatted away an insect. “Indeed.”

“To think,” I said, looking down the rows of vegetable plants that were my special charge at the abbey, “all this started as dry, little seeds.”

“And dung and mud,” added Affino.

“Ah yes, but isn’t that part of the beauty of nature? Life transcends it humble origins and rises nobly toward the stars.”

“Nothing transcends its origins, Brother Phil.”

“You believe that?”

“No matter how full of potential the seed, nothing can grow beyond the nourishments of its soil and environment. Life can never outgrow the limitations of its formative years.”

“Oh, what a pessimist you are today, dear brother!”

Affino grunted by way of reply and began making his way out of the garden. I followed reluctantly, still enamored with the glorious colors of my budding vegetables.

“This garden,” I began, “so full of the bloom and beauty and life… Is it not like a mirror held before the face of God?”

“Really, Brother Phil,” said Affino over his shoulder, “you brag on your vegetables like a doddering old father. It’s… unseemly.” He shielded his eyes with a hand and glanced toward the abbey’s main house. “You do know that pride is a sin?”

“Ah, but then, so is ingratitude,” I returned, taking Affino by the crook of the arm.

Affino put each of his hands into his kimono’s opposite sleeve and began walking uneasily over the rough ground of the garden. His bald head, along with his large, hooked nose and severe eyes, gave him the look of a judgmental eagle.

As we turned toward the main house, I spotted one of our young novices scampering toward us wearing the coarse, brown robe of his station.

“Brother Phil,” he said excitedly and nearly out of breath as he reached us. His hair was cut very short, and his skin, smooth and without blemish, ran tautly over protruding cheekbones.

“Yes, Agapo?” I said, allowing Affino to continue ahead of me.

“Two men are here to see you.”

Affino stopped abruptly and turned toward us.

“Me?” I said. “Whatever for?”

“They wouldn’t say.”

Affino and I exchanged a glance.

“Well, please tell them I’m on my way, Agapo. Thank you.”

“Yes, of course, Brother Phil.” Agapo nodded so low as to approach a bow, then turned and began dashing up the inclined ground.

“Oh, and Agapo?” I called.

He stopped and turned immediately. “Yes?”

“Make sure to offer them some refreshment, will you?”

“Of course, Brother Phil.”

“What do you think it’s about?” asked Affino as we begin up the hill. There was concern in his voice. Or perhaps it was suspicion. “Something concerning… the old days?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion.”

Affino and I parted ways at the house, I moving toward my mysterious guests, he toward his dormitory cell, most likely for some mid-morning meditation or perhaps to spend an hour on his computer hobbies.

I pushed through the split of the backdoor’s hanging screens, their bamboo borders whisking over the concrete floor, and found two gentlemen standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. One was tall and thin, the other somewhat below average height and heavier set. Both were dressed in dark-colored business suits and absorbed in viewing the holographic images produced by the frentays tucked behind their ears. As was typical with most hologram spectators I had seen, their expressions were slack, almost lifeless. Their holograms were cycling through advertisements for the myriad products available in the world beyond the abbey walls.

Agapo, sweat still beading on his forehead from his recent run to the vegetable garden, was quietly rolling forward a refreshment cart of water, bread and cheese. I nodded my thanks as he silently turned and exited the large, sparsely provided room.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” I said, crossing my arms and placing my hands into the drooping sleeves of my kimono.

When the two men made no response, I realized that they had their audio implants activated. It was easy to forget the new technologies permeating the outside world. I moved purposefully into their peripheral vision.

They snapped to attention, shutting off their frentays with their wristies and turning toward me, their postures straightening, and their faces reanimating to a certain extent.

I made a shallow bow. “You wished to see me, gentlemen?”

The shorter one crooked his wristie-bearing arm and touched the small device’s face with a finger. The frentays behind his ears cast an image toward me.

The image was startling. It was a picture of me.

The man pointed toward it with a questioning look. “You?”

“Yes. That is me,” I responded. I felt an uneasiness tickling the back of my brain. “Or was.”

The two men mirrored looks of disbelief.

“You are Billips Phinizey?” the shorter man asked skeptically.

A bolt of memory nearly staggered me.

I am lying on my back in a cold, gray room, secured to a thin bed. The head of the bed has been pitched forward so that I am almost in a vertical position. A youngish man, strongly built and stylishly dressed, stands to my right with a computer tablet. His hairline is beginning to recede, leaving behind a centrally protruding peninsula of fine hair. He shoves a finger into my face.

“Payback Phinizey?” the taller man said, snapping me back to the present inside the abbey.

“That was a long time ago,” I responded. I moved toward the cart brought in by Agapo. “May I offer you some refreshment?”

I poured a single glass of water and surreptiously gulped down one of the pills I kept in small pouch tied around my wrist. Almost instantly, I felt my mind clearing and my good spirits returning.

When I turned to face the two men again, the taller one was looking toward his partner. He touched his wristie, and a flashvid from his frentay system played in the air between them. I could just make it out from my angle. It was of a woman looking suspiciously at a man who was shrugging guiltily. It lasted all of two seconds.

I’m skeptical, the meme was supposed to convey.

The shorter man took a step toward me. “How long ago?” he asked.

“That picture was taken over twenty-five years ago,” I answered.

At the nudging of the shorter man, the taller one pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and held it toward me.

“Paper?” I said, impressed. I knew the outside world kept and transferred nearly all their records digitally.

I took hold of the paper, appreciatively noting its fine quality and glancing down at the curvaceous writing appearing on one side.

“Handwritten text,” I said. “Very nice.”

The duo stared at me, the taller one grasping his hands behind his back.

“You want me to read it?”

They both nodded.

I cleared my throat and began to read aloud…

Do you think that his contempt shall not be bruising to you, when he hath power to crush? Therefore lay hold of him. Bear him to the rock Tarpeian and from thence into destruction cast him… He wieldeth the scourge of tyranny… Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule nor ever will be ruled.

It was signed, A Traitorous Innovator.

I held out the paper. “Lovely.”

The taller man took the note from me and began refolding it so brutally that I had to restrain myself from wincing.

A movement from the other man caught my attention and, turning to him, I saw that he was facing me, his shoulders raised and his palms upward. In the flashvid looping in front of him, an adolescent was scratching his head over what appeared to be his homework.

“Ah,” I said. “You don’t understand the note’s message.”

“You do?” he asked.

“Of course,” I answered. “Shakespeare. Coriolanus, to be exact. Although the quotation’s been a bit puffed up with an interpolation or two.”

The men looked to each other uncomprehendingly.

“Basically, the note just says that it’s better to get rid of a dangerous man sooner rather than later, before his power can increase and he becomes even more of a threat.”

They seemed very pleased with this answer and exchanged knowing looks. The shorter man stepped toward me and took me by the elbow. “Come with us.”

They put me in the backseat of a government jetty, and we lifted off with the stockier man behind the pilot’s yoke. The ride downtown was nearly silent. The jetty stayed mostly on autopilot, and both men remained fixated on their watchworld holograms. I laid back as well as I could against the too-short back seat, my knees ramming into the divider between the jetty’s front and back sections. I drifted almost to sleep, a sort of waking dream coming over me…

“I had to come and see you off myself, Payback,” the balding man is saying.

“Gee thanks, Sterling. I’m touched.” I try to free my arms from the straps attached to the upright bed, but they don’t budge.

Sterling smiles his version of smile, his mouth closed and the corners of his thin lips curving down instead of up. He shakes his head. “A jerk to the end.”

“Gotta be me.”

“You’ll never stop being you. I don’t care what they dose you with for the next twenty years.” He leans closer, jabbing the air with the wide index finger of his left hand. “You’re a jerk going in, and you’ll be a jerk coming out.”

I offer as much of a shrug as my confined position allows.

He withdraws his thick finger from my face and begins writing on the tablet-computer he has been clutching in his other hand. “I have to tell you, Payback. I’ve never had a more satisfying day on the job. Putting a piece of trash like you in the bin almost makes up for all the rest of it.”

As soon as I entered Chief Denari’s office, I was slapped hard across the face. The shock and pain were so intense that I barely kept on my feet.

The stout woman in front of me was dressed in the type of business suit favored by professionals in the city—gray, with crisp corners and hard creases. Her dark eyes watched me closely, but there was no anger or aggression in them.

“Why are you so upset with me, friend?” I asked, rubbing my stinging cheek, utterly perplexed. “I apologize if I have wronged you in some way.”

“I just slapped you ‘cross the face, and all you got to say is, Why are you so upset?” She looked me up and down, disgust riding her face. “Damn, they sure did a number on you, didn’t they?” She turned her back to me and began toward the cluttered desk near the window. “I just had to make sure,” she said over her shoulder. “I won’t have some psycho up here roaming my hallways, Phinizey.”

“Actually, I go by Phil, now.”

“I know all about you, Phil. I’ve been going over your file for the last hour.”

“My file? Why?”

The woman I assumed to be Chief Denari sat in the chair on the other side of her desk. “Have a seat. Do you read the news there at the abbey?”

“It’s not forbidden,” I answered as I collected the fabric of my kimono and seated myself across from her. “But most of us eschew the newsfeeds. It’s all so negative and depressing. And so much of the commentary is mean-spirited. Bad for the soul.”

“Yeah, well, the whole world burns bad for the soul, Phil. News is just the second-hand smoke.”

“Does the news have something to do with why I’m here?”

“Not directly. But murder always makes the news. I thought you may have heard about it.”

“Murder? Here? In this city?”

“Permameds and neuro-engineering are good, Phil, but they ain’t perfect. It’s been twenty-six years since our last homicide. We were due.”

“Twenty-six years?” I asked. That seemed too much of a coincidence.

“That’s right. You hold the distinct non-honor of being this city’s last murderer. And how long was it before you? Six, seven years?”

“Eight,” I said. “No one had committed a murder for eight years before that night.” A lever clicked over in my brain. “Wait a minute. You don’t think I had anything to do with it, do you?”

“No, no. You’re not a suspect. We think you can help us.”

“Me? How?”

“Whoever this guy is, he’s been targeting Enforcers. And not just any Enforcers. Hardbolters.”

“He killed a hardbolter?”

“Three. And he’s using a gun.”

“A gun? You mean a real gun?”

“Bullets and everything.”

“But where would he get a real gun?”

“They’re out there. You have to remember, there were hundreds of millions of them around before they were outlawed.”

“Three deaths. So it’s a serial killer, then.”

“We’ve lost three bolters in six weeks. Officers out there just doing their jobs. Two of ’em had families.”

“Tragic,” I said, shaking my head.

She glared at me as if I had said something rude, then continued. “Bottom line… We want to get this guy before he strikes again. And we want it very, very badly.”

“This has to do with that Shakespeare note your two men showed me earlier, doesn’t it?”

“Axe and Hammer, yeah. They’ve been pulling at the leash to help solve this one. They knew all three of the victims—two men and one woman.”

“What’s the note got to do with it?”

“The note was left by the killer.”

“By the killer? So, he’s a literate.” The ability to handwrite complex sentences was a skill possessed only by the Gold caste and maybe a few Silvers. Bronzes and Irons communicated mostly in memes or short phrases. But why on Earth would a Gold be killing public servants?

“Seems so,” responded the chief.

“But how do I fit in? You want me to offer some spiritual guidance to the troops? Maybe say a few words of encouragement?”

“Not quite.” Denari interlaced her fingers atop the clutter of her desk and hunched forward. “Have you ever heard the expression, it takes a thief to catch a thief?”

“Of course.”

“We’re dealing with a level of premeditated violence that our society hasn’t seen since the days before the Preceptors’ reforms.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “A truly tortured soul.”

“Since the Preceptors initiated personality cleansing, aggression has been irradicated from the city. Dealing with a killer has become something… well, something frankly outside our core skillset.”

“Have you considered using computer modeling? One of my brothers at the abbey, Brother Affino, he’s especially good with programming. Maybe I could—”

“Computer modeling’s been a bust. If we’re gonna catch this guy, we need somebody—some human body—who can get inside his head. Think like he thinks. Help us understand what we’re up against.”

“And you think I can do that for you?”

Denari leaned back, sliding a thinscreen from her desk down into her lap. She unlocked it with a fingerprint, and the screen brightened. “You’re the only murderer this city’s had in nearly thirty-five years, Phil. Until now, that is. And your record indicates that you were a pretty vicious bastard even before the murder.”

“That was a long time ago, Chief Denari. I’m a changed man now. The treatments I received during my time away completely cured me of my violent impulses and psycho-sexual issues. I haven’t had the smallest aggressive thought since I’ve been out.”

“Yes, but you’re still hard-wired for it. You had no prenatal conditioning done before birth, right? No D.N.A. editing or anything like that?”

“That is correct, but—”

“Then you’re our man. The ability to think aggressively is still in there,” she clicked her temple with a painted fingernail.

“I certainly hope not,” I declared, horrified at the mere thought of it. “You may not know this, chief, but as part of my discharge procedures, they implanted regulators inside my body to keep my hormones and other chemicals properly balanced. In my case, which I’m told was on the more extreme side of the behavioral spectrum, they also felt it necessary to place a few stints inside my skull. Apparently my brain had a few improperly developed areas.”

“I’m sure it did.”

“So, I’m sorry, but–“

Denari dimmed her thinscreen and threw it back on her desk. “We’ll remove the stints.”

“Remove the stints? You can’t. I mean, I’ve never felt so at peace.”

“Your peace of mind is not my top priority. Besides, you don’t mean it.”

“Pardon?” I felt myself beginning to perspire.

“That’s the hormone regimen talking. That’s not the real you. The real you is buried somewhere beneath all the sedatives and crap they keep your body flooded with. Inhibitors, steroids, stints…” She peered into my eyes, not at them, but through them. “But I know you’re in there, Phinizey. And I’m gonna bring you back to the surface. The city needs you.”

“As you wish, Chief Denari,” I said, “But I fear I will disappoint you. I think you’ll find that my mental and emotional development has progressed more deeply than mere chemicals and implants. I’ve really changed. I’m not that violent young man I once was.”

“People don’t change, Phil. They can’t. Not really. You’re just too heavily dosed-up twenty-four-seven to know who you really are anymore. But underneath all those prescriptions and genetic tweaks, you’re still that sonuvabitch, Payback Phinizey. I’m sure of it.”

She stood, and I stood as well, putting my hands inside my long sleeves.

“Report to Evidence downstairs,” she said. “They’ll give you a copy of the killer’s manifesto and all three of the notes he left behind at the murder-scenes. I want you to study them.”

“Manifesto?”

“Yeah. This guy considers himself a real scholar, I guess.”

“What’s it about?”

“You got me. I recognized most of the words, but I couldn’t tell you what he was really trying to say. That’s another reason why we sent for you. You’ve been highly recommended for your level of literacy.”

“Highly recommended? By whom? The abbot?”

“Commandant Sterling.”

“Sterling?”

My mind flashed to our last meeting, twenty-six years previously in the cold, gray room. The frowning smile, the upright bed with its tight straps, the thick finger shoved in my face.

“He accessed your post-confinement intelligence quotient. Says it’s off the charts.”

“There must be some mistake, Chief Denari. Obviously, I received many years’ worth of subconscious education while I was under, but I’m no genius. Not by a long shot.”

“You’ll do. And one more thing… Stop by the infirmary on your way out. They’ll be expecting you. We need to start recalibrating your meds immediately.”