Hammer Town Read online

  “Oh you’ll want me. Sooner or later all the girls want me,” Conner said. She reached out and grabbed hold of Elantra’s leg close to her hip. The girl slapped at her hand till she let go.

  “I like men,” Elantra said matter-of-factly.

  “Funny, they all say that, too.” Conner laughed at the expression on the girl’s face.

  “You’re just trying to annoy me,” Elantra said. “And succeeding beyond your wildest dreams. I don’t believe you’re working for my father. If you were, you’d let me talk to him. My father would never hire someone like you. My father...”

  “I wonder if you’re as naive as you seem, or if you know just what kind of scum your father is...”

  “My father is the greatest, most noble man I have ever known...”

  “How did your mother die, Elantra?” Conner asked.

  It was night. She had heard a noise – someone screaming. She stumbled through the dark. For some reason the walkways weren’t running, and lights weren’t anticipating her direction and going on. There was a glint of light coming from her parents’ bedroom. Her father was standing there with something shiny and long in his hand. It was dripping something red on the floor. Her mother lay on the ground behind him. There was red stuff all over her, and she was still. Her eyes were open, staring at Elantra, but she couldn’t see. Elantra knew she couldn’t. Her father was screaming, “Computer! Send police! Send doctors! My wife has just killed herself.” He looked at Elantra then yelled. “Elantra, go to your room!”

  She couldn’t move. She just stood there looking at her mother, wondering why she didn’t smile at her, wondering what all that red stuff was.

  “Elantra!” her father screamed again. “Go to your room!”

  This time her feet worked. She ran into her room and into the corner where she sank down on the floor and started to cry. Her life had changed forever that night. Her mother had touched her, held her when she was scared. Since her mother had died... Well, her father never held her. He wouldn’t even touch her. Contact made him nervous.

  “My mother killed herself,” Elantra answered coldly.

  “Yeah, that’s the official report,” Conner said plainly. “They couldn’t ever prove he did it. Of course, we can never prove he did anything.”

  “My father is not a criminal! He didn’t kill my mother!” Elantra screamed at Conner.

  Conner shrugged. “OK. So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that she did kill herself. Did you ever wonder why?” Conner asked.

  “She was unhappy,” Elantra snapped back. “Who knows why someone kills themselves?”

  “Or for that matter if they really did.”

  Chapter 4

  “You fucking idiot!” Tarent screamed at James, and James for one was glad that there was half a city between them. “You sent Mishy’s sister’s widow to retrieve my daughter! What the hell were you thinking?”

  “The computer didn’t think there would be a problem. There shouldn’t have been, unless of course you really had Peggy Mishy killed. Which there was no way for the computer to know since you didn’ get caught if you did...”

  “Damn it! You knew!” Tarent rephrased it. “You knew that Conner McVee thought I killed Peggy Mishy. You knew, and you put her on the case anyway. I swear if she does anything to my daughter...”

  James clicked his tongue. “Threatenin’ a police agent is a minimum five months in prison, an I don’ think I have to tell ya how many enemies ya got there... I didn’ know that Conner thought ya killed Peggy. I have here a contract Conner McVee just faxed through which says ya have temporarily hired her away from my agency as a protector agent...”

  “I never hired that crazy bitch. She’s a fucking dyke for God’s sake! My daughter has grown up in the building. She’s never been exposed to...”

  “…the scum that people like you create.” Rank finished for him with a shrug. “The contract ya made with Hammer is all on public disk. All very legal an above board. I appreciate what you’re tryin’ to do...”

  “God damn it! I’m not trying to run a cover. I’m telling you that one of your agents has kidnapped my daughter!”

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Elantra said.

  Conner had no doubt that she did. After all, Conner had stopped to take a leak three times while the kid was asleep.

  “So you’ve said a dozen times. I’ve told you your options,” Conner said with a sigh. She was tired, they were still fifty miles away from their destination, and she had to go as bad as the girl did. She pulled over. “Don’t think of it as roughing it, think of it as the world is your toilet.” She reached in her glove box and pulled out a roll of toilet paper.

  “What’s that?” Elantra asked.

  “After you pee, you take a few pieces of paper off the roll and you dry yourself off.”

  “You’re kidding me!” Elantra shrieked.

  “It’s the truth. You want to watch me go first?” she asked.

  “No!” Elantra screeched. “Door open.” The door did not respond to her order. “Door open!” When the door still did not open she said angrily, “Your crappy car is broken.”

  Conner sighed, got out of the car, walked around and let the girl out. Elantra glared up at Conner and Conner smiled back. “Can I watch you go?”

  “Most certainly not.” Elantra grabbed a few pieces of paper off the roll and marched off into the woods. Conner went in the other direction. When she got back the girl was still gone and so was the cat.

  “Fucking little bitch!” Conner grabbed her gun off the back seat and started down the path the way the girl had gone. She flipped her patch up and the electronic eye under it scanned the area for signs of heat and easily found the girl and the cat. She appeared to be running. Conner pulled down her patch and ran after her. “Stupid fucking girl,” she hissed. In seconds she had caught up with Elantra. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Conner demanded.

  “Getting away from you!” Elantra tripped and fell, and the cat went flying, screaming all the way to the ground. Conner ran up to Elantra and jerked her to her feet. Tears were streaming down the girl’s face although it was hard to tell if it was because she was actually hurt or if she was just that scared.

  Conner shook her hard. “Look around you!” she screamed.

  Elantra looked. All around her were green plants, some in bloom, and huge trees – a dense forest. To her left there was a creek flowing over rocks. She saw birds, real birds flying. “It’s beautiful!” she gasped.

  “Yes it is,” Conner said with an impatient sigh. “And just how long do you think a FreightCity building brat like you could live out here?”

  “I’m scared,” Elantra cried. “I’m scared. I just want to go home.”

  “And you really think you can get there from here without me? With that fucking cat... Do you even have any idea where you are? Do you even remember which direction the road is? Once you got to the road, how would you get a ride, and how do you know whether the person you are about to ride with isn’t one of Mishy’s boys? How do you know they won’t rape you or steal your cat and kill you? Besides which, there just isn’t that much traffic. How many cars have you seen on the road today?”

  “One, maybe two...”

  “Exactly. No one travels anymore. That’s why the roads are in such shitty shape. Even if they absolutely have to travel they get on a plane or a rail and they fly there. No one has time to drive. Do you see a fucking airport or rail terminal here?”

  “No, but...”

  “But what, girl? There are no buts. I’m it. I’m your only ticket back to civilization. Right now if it wasn’t for me you’d be dead. Right now I’m the only thing keeping you alive. I’m your only friend, sugar, and you by God better remember that. Now come on, we’ve wasted enough time.” Conner started pulling her back towards the car, her hand clamped firmly to the girl’s upper arm.

  “Where’s my cat?”

  “Fuck the cat!” Canner screamed.

&
nbsp; “You can’t make me,” Elantra said defiantly, and stopped dead in her tracks so that Conner would have had to drag her to get her back to the car.

  “Come on, chick, don’t make me carry you.”

  Elantra ignored her. “Here, Mr. Buttons! Come here, Mr. Buttons!”

  “Mr. Buttons!” Conner’s laughter momentarily washed away her anger. She let go of Elantra’s arm. “Mr. Buttons?”

  “When he was a kitten he used to like to play with the buttons on my blouse,” Elantra defended.

  “This kid I used to hang with told me that when he was a baby he used to play with the shit in his pants. I’m thinking he ought to be thanking God that he didn’t come from your family.”

  The cat ran up to Elantra, and she picked him up.

  “Let’s go,” Conner ordered.

  Elantra followed without further prodding. “Can I talk to my daddy now?” She asked as she climbed in the car.

  “For the last time... You can talk to him when we get where we’re going.”

  Like most Constructionist towns WrenchTown got its name from a common hand tool. Elantra had only seen anything like it in her virtual reality history vid. It was like being on another planet, or more accurately, in another age.

  Conner opened the window, took in a deep breath and smiled. Elantra smelled it, too. It was the smell of food, but it was much stronger and more vivid than any food she had ever smelled before. Her mouth watered. It was a new sensation, or at least she couldn’t remember it ever happening before, but then she’d never been hungry before, either.

  Conner pulled up in front of a restaurant and stopped. She turned the key and the car’s engine was silent. She pulled the keys out of the ignition.

  “What are those?” Elantra asked.

  “They’re called keys. They’re used to turn the car off and on.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to say, ‘Car, start’?”

  “Yes, but I prefer sticking things in to places, working them around and pulling them out.” Her lewd remark was wasted on the girl – who obviously missed the double meaning. There was an edge of disappointment in Conner’s voice when she said as she got out of the car, “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  It was two hours after the morning crowd and about two hours before the lunch crowd, so the place was pretty empty. First Elantra had bitched about leaving the cat in the car, then she had bitched that her blouse was torn and she was hardly presentable to be in public. Once in the restaurant she had bitched about how unsanitary it was to eat someplace where total strangers ate, and that she wasn’t about to eat food that had been touched by human hands. Conner had ordered for her anyway and then she had bitched that she was never going to eat anything that came out of a chicken’s butt. She had now eaten everything on her plate and was slowly working on what was on Conner’s. “Do you mind?” Conner asked.

  “I’m very hungry,” the girl said. Conner pushed her plate towards the girl and went to pay the check.

  “Haven’t seen you in WrenchTown for awhile, Hammer,” the waitress said taking her money.

  “Haven’t felt much like vacationing since Peg died. Keep the change, Helen.”

  “Thanks. So, is that what they’re wearing in the big city?” Helen asked nodding her head towards Elantra.

  “You know building folk, not a bit of sense.”

  “So... is the building brat your new lady?”

  “No, just a friend interested in learning our ways. She’s thinking of converting. Do you know if Doc Pherson’s in town?”

  “Why? You got trouble with an implant?”

  “You might say that. Is he around?”

  “He went to the lake, but he should be back in a couple of months. His intern’s taking care of his patients here, but I don’t think he knows a damn thing about implants. Is it bad?”

  “It’s not life threatening. It’s just something I should have had taken care of a long time ago.”

  “You want me to have some supplies sent to your cabin?”

  “You know, Helen, that completely slipped my mind. Yeah, I could use some supplies. I’ll make a list.”

  Elantra came over and watched intently as Conner made lines on the paper. “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m writing. It’s a lost art of the audio computer age. We read, too.” Conner smiled at the look on Elantra’s face. “You’ll find we do most things differently here. What size do you wear?”

  “Six...”

  “And your shoes?”

  “A nine...”

  “Lord you got big ole feet for such a tiny little girl. Helen, get this girl some sensible clothes and shoes, too. Everything she’s got... Well, you can see it’s not appropriate for Constructionist life.”

  “Will do, Citizen.” She took the list Conner handed her. “Good to see you again, Hammer... You gonna come by the club tonight?”

  “Does a baby shit yellow?”

  They drove another five minutes into a completely wooded area. In the woods ahead of them, Elantra saw a small house that appeared to be made from dead trees stacked up. Around it were huge, living trees.

  “Peg and I used to come up here to reaffirm our faith. The cabin is pretty primitive, but if you’ll allow yourself to leave your prima donna bullshit here in the car I think you’ll enjoy your stay, and we should be fairly safe here.”

  Elantra followed behind Conner. She watched as Conner put one of those key things into the door and turned the round thing. Conner pushed and the door opened. As they walked in, the cat yowled and jumped out of Elantra’s arms. Conner flipped a switch on the wall, and the lights came on. Conner sighed. It really had been a long time. There was dust everywhere. The cat walked right into the fireplace, dug a hole in the old ash still there and took a dump. No doubt it looked like the self-cleaning shoot he was accustomed to using at home.

  “Fucking beautiful,” Conner mumbled. She was not about to tell Elantra at that point that the shit was not going to clean itself up. Conner was tired and she wanted to sleep. “This is the living room, there’s the kitchen, there’s the bathroom, and there is my bedroom. You can either sleep here on the couch or you can sleep with me. I won’t promise not to take advantage of you, because I most probably will. So if you want to have sex, sleep with me, and if you don’t, then sleep on the couch, but I’m not giving up my bed.”

  “I’ll take the couch,” Elantra said. She was too tired to protest Conner’s vulgar comments, but not too tired to bitch about the house. “This house is dirty and it smells bad.”

  Of course it smells bad your fucking cat just took a dump in the fireplace. Conner smiled and said, “Bitch, bitch, bitch...”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you complain too much.” Conner opened a trunk and pulled out some bedding. “Here.” She threw the girl a pillow and a blanket. “Sleep good.” She took her bedclothes and headed for her bedroom.

  “Hey!” the girl hollered. Conner turned an unhappy, tired face towards her.

  “Hey what?”

  “What’s your real name?”

  Conner figured that wasn’t too much to ask. “My name is Conner McVee. My friends call me Hammer.”

  Elantra nodded. “My name is Elantra Powers, my friends call me Lanny,” she said nervously.

  “Yes, I know.” Conner smiled and went in her room, closing the door behind her.

  Elantra stared at the computer box Conner had removed from her car. Conner had said she could talk to her father when they reached their destination, and they were here. She was about to walk over and get the computer when Conner’s door opened. She walked out, walked over and picked up the computer. Elantra stared at her in dumbfounded disbelief, and Conner smiled broadly.

  “Yes. I know exactly what you’re thinking.” She took the computer and went back in her room. “It will take some time to make a clean link. I’ll do it when I get up. I need some sleep now.”

  Elantra sat down on the couch carefully
. Eventually she lay down and waited for the couch to make her comfortable, but it didn’t budge. She even had to cover herself up, and that wasn’t easy. Her toes were either sticking out or her chest was. Finally she got comfortable. She stared at the ceiling. “Light off,” she ordered. “I said light off!” she screamed. Conner walked in, flipped a switch on the wall, and the lights went off. She double checked the lock on the door and then started back for her room. “It’s still light,” Elantra complained.

  “You’re giving me a giant pain in my ass.” Conner walked over and pulled the curtains over the window. Elantra watched in wide-eyed amazement.

  “They’re called curtains. They’re used to filter the light out of the room instead of using computerized glass,” Conner explained. She walked over and covered the girl up. “You warm enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go the fuck to sleep!” Conner screamed.

  “What’s that mean, go to sex asleep? Do you want me to dream about sex or have sex till I go to sleep, or...”

  “I want you to shut up and go to sleep. It’s that simple. Were you raised in a box?”

  Elantra was silent. She had been raised in a box, what could she say? Conner threw up her hands and went back in her room; she started to close her door.

  “Conner McVee?”

  “What is it now?” Conner screamed back.

  “I’m scared. Could you...”

  “I’ll leave the door open,” she sighed. “Now, please, let me go to sleep.”

  Elantra watched Conner lie down. She could see her from where she lay on the couch, and for some reason that made her feel better.

  Elantra was sure she’d never get to sleep with all the strange thoughts that were racing through her head, and the oddness of her surroundings. She stared at the ceiling for several minutes, finally decided she wasn’t comfortable enough to go to sleep, and then she did.

  Chapter 5

  Elantra didn’t know how long she had slept; she woke to some strange pounding noise. She looked up and Conner was opening the door. A dark-haired man walked in with two containers and set them down on a table by the door, and then he hugged Conner McVee. It seemed that these Constructionists didn’t understand germ theory and thought nothing of bodily contact. “Good to see you,” he said.