Future Crimes Part 1

Future Crime.

EDITED BY.

Martin H. Greenberg and John Heifers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Introduction 1999 by John Heifers Pein Bek Longpela Telimpon 1999 by Alan Dean Foster The Mojave Two-Step 1999 by Norman Partridge Shakespeare Minus One 1999 by Barbara Paul Good Repair 1999 by Craig Shaw Gardner The Kidnapping of Roni Tahr 1999 by Alan Rodgers In Memoriam 1999 by Mike Stotter Sleep that Burns 1999 by Jerry Sykes The Death of Winston Foster 1999 by R. Davis Glory Hand in the Soft City 1999 by Jay Bonansinga The Crime of Transfiguration 1999 by Will Murray Pia and the King of Siam 1999 by Janet Berliner The Serpent Was More Subtle 1999 by Tom Piccirilli Tinker's Last Case 1999 by Ron Goulart All the Unlived Moments 1999 by Gary Braunbeck The White City 1999 by Alan Brennert Setting Free the Daughters of Earth 1999 by Peter Crowther

INTRODUCTION.

by John Heifers

Warning: the following introduction is not for the faint of heart.

Having said that, let's talk about crime.

If one looks up the definition of crime in any dictionary, a variation of the following will often be found: "An act or omission of a forbidden act or omission of a duty governed by law which makes the offender liable to be punished by that law." Even that specific language cannot even begin to cover the gamut of crimes that man is capable of committing against his fellow man. Ever since Cain picked up a rock or piece of wood or clenched his fist, and with malice aforethought, struck down his brother Abel (for those who prefer to uphold the evolutionary side of history, just imagine a caveman coveting his neighbor's mate or dwelling, and picking up his club before going to pay that neighbor a visit, with the same result), humans have been plotting to commit crimes against nature, against humanity, and, in several cases, crimes against our very souls.

For it is the invasive nature of most crimes that shock us, an a.s.sault of our homes, of our privacy, of our very bodies, shattering the peaceful, tranquil world that we once knew. Even if we just witness a 2 John Heifers crime, there is an overwhelming feeling of having been invaded, that nothing is safe anymore, that there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. And when the crime is senseless, such as the occasional rash of ma.s.s public shootings that seem to crop up at least once a year (and repeating at an alarmingly rapid rate), then the crime is even more horrifying, because we stop to look around us and wonder: who's going to snap next, and will I be in the same room with him or her when they go?

Of course, with the advance of technology, crime has become easier to commit. Clubs and rocks have given way to pistols and hunting rifles, and nowadays, who's going to argue with a bullet? Complicated con games are being replaced by computers, with which it is possible to rob thousands of people without ever seeing their faces. As life grows more complicated with each day, it will be easier to let things, information and such, slip through the cracks. And there will always be enterprising people who will use those found things for their own benefit.

When we first came up with the idea for this book, we were curious as to the types of stories we would receive, whether they would be full of high-tech gadgetry and victimless crimes, or if the writers we asked to contribute still thought that crimes would be committed face-to-face, one person against another. We were pleasantly (or perhaps unpleasantly would be a better choice) surprised to discover an intriguing mix of both the high tech and low tech, from the thieves who score an unusual haul in Norman Partridge's story to a deadly culture clash as envisioned by Alan Dean Foster. No matter how futuristic the society, and how technologically advanced the law enforcement, somewhere, sometime, someone will always be committing a crime.

PEIN BEK LONGPELA.

TELIMPON.

by Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles.

He has a bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA. He has traveled extensively around the world, from Australia to Papua New Guinea. He has also written fiction in just about every genre, and is known for his excellent movie novelizations. Currently, he lives in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, a.s.sorted dogs, cats, fish, javelina, and other animals, where he is working on several new novels and media projects.

WAHGI first heard the m.u.f.fled screams and angry curses as he was rummaging through the dumpster.

Not that this was unusual. Late at night in Boroko there were frequent fights between men who had blown their weekly paycheck on cheap beer staggering drunkenly out of illegal pubs, between tired wh.o.r.es and their customers, between predatory taxi drivers battling over fares with irate pa.s.sengers unable to pay--even the chickens that clucked and pecked then- way across the central square around which the rundown shops were situated were usually in rotten mood.

But this encounter was different.

Instead of trade pidgin, the combatants were spewing an inarticulate mush of proper English, Strine, and several foreign tongues Wahgi did not recognize. That was notable. After four pm, the few tourists who braved the square in search of artifacts, Sepik River wood carvings, and illegal bird-of-paradise plumes were usually gone. After five, when the last Europeanowned stores padlocked their security screens for the night, only local people were left. To hear European tongues this late at night suggested goings-on that were far from normal.

Like everyone he knew, Wahgi was intensely curious about the wonderful things white people carried around with them. He was among the first of his tribe to come down from the Highlands into the capital in search of work to help support his family. Highland people learned quickly, and it did not take a village Big Man to realize that these wonderful objects could | only be obtained with a pocketful of money. Yams : were not accepted currency in the stores, and only rarely would a sympathetic checker, perhaps not long down from the Highlands himself, accept a pig. If anyone had told Wahgi a year ago that it was better to .

possess a fistful of brightly colored paper than a stockade full of pigs, he would have scratched at his a.r.s.e gra.s.s and looked upon them as if they had taken leave :

of their senses.

But the fact that the Highland people had only ; made contact with western civilization in the 1930s did not mean that they were irredeemably ignorant. , Only isolated.

What bad thing could possibly happen to him if he just went to see what was going on? Certainly he wasn't having much luck rifling the contents of the smelly dumpster. Stretching himself to his full five foot five, he boosted himself up and out and followed the sounds of dissension. Scattered among the shouts and curses like corn seeds between rows of sweet potatoes was much grunting and snorting. It reminded him of rutting pigs crammed into a pen too small for them.

There were four men fighting in the dark covered access way that ran between the Ha Chin dry goods store and the niuspepa shop. Even though he couldn't read, Wahgi liked to go into the niuspepa shop to look at the pictures in the glossy magazines, especially the ones that showed women of all colors in skimpy clothing.

That is, he did until the shop manager chased him out, realizing that the hick Highlander had no money.

Concealing himself in a corner near the back alley that intersected the access way he watched the fight in silence. Even though he could see no longpela naips, or machetes as they were called in the Aussie stores, he could tell that the fight was serious. Though he couldn't see which of the four men was wounded, fresh blood, black and wet, was running on the cracked concrete, mixing with the betel nut juice stains. He wondered what they were fighting about, here too late at night in an unlit pa.s.sage in a poor shopping area like Boroko.

Then he saw the suitcase. It was much smaller than the ones the ground crews unloaded from the planes at the airport. Too small to hold much of anything in the way of clothing, which is what he knew white people usually carried in their baggage. The small suitcase lay off to one side, propped against the grill of iron bars that protected the niuspepa store. Was it worth four men fighting over? If so, it might be full of something valuable. Maybe, he thought excitedly, money paper.

He gauged his chances. The men were wholly occupied with one another.

In the village he had been a good hunter, bringing back tree kangaroos, monitor lizards, rats, hombills, and crowned pigeons. Like all Huli Highlanders he was small and stocky. If they saw him, would they forget about their own fight and come after him? Though new to Port Moresby, he was confident he knew the hidden places of Boroko better than any European.

Besides, he hadn't eaten since yesterday.

Waiting until he thought the moment just right, he slid out of the shadows and along the wall, keeping low. Providentially, the suitcase had a handle fastened to the top. He was a little surprised to find that the case was made of metal instead of the soft fabrics and leathers he was used to seeing at the airport, but it was not particularly heavy. Small in stature the Huli might be, but every man had muscle as dense as the stump of a mahogany tree.

Gripping the suitcase in a fist of iron, he slipped back the way he had come, keeping the black iron security bars against his spine. None of the combantants noticed him. As soon as he reached the alley, he turned and ran. That was something else Highlanders were good at.

He did not stop until he was halfway to the suburb of Koki, where he shared a shack of salvaged wood and tin with two other young men from the village.

Like all the buildings in Koki, it was built on stilts out over the water. It was not a bad place for poor people to live. No one could sneak up on you unless they had a good, quiet boat, and the tide provided the services the nonexistent sewage system could not.

Pausing on the Ela Beach road beneath the harsh yellow lights of a British Petroleum station, he settled down beneath a hibiscus bush to inspect his prize.

Even to his country eyes the case looked expensive.

Though small, the lock proved resistant to his probing.

But only momentarily.

One of the night attendants at the station was another Huli, not from Wahgi's village but a man he knew casually. Though suspicious, the attendant lent him the hammer and heavy screwdriver his fellow clan member requested. He knew Wahgi wouldn't run off with them. That would have put the attendant in deep trouble with the station's owners, which would have turned into a payback situation against Wahgi's village.

Every Highlander treated the ancient tradition of payback with extreme respect, and Wahgi was no exception.

Modern as it was, the lock eventually yielded to Wahgi's strength, persistence, and single-minded determination.

After returning the tools, he went back into the bush to examine the case's contents. In these he was both disappointed and puzzled.

The case contained a number of small electronic devices that were as alien to Wahgi as if they had fallen from the moon. He knew what a radio was, and a television, and an airplane, because he had seen them up close, but otherwise his knowledge of contemporary twenty-first century technology was lamentably scant. Another section of the case was full of paper, but to his disgust and disappointment none of it was money. Though colorful, the papers were much too big to be currency; PNG, Aussie, or otherwise. He did not know what they were. Perhaps his roommates Gembogi and Kuikui might know, though they had spent little more time in Mosby than had he.

He was philosophical about his theft. The contents might be worthless, but the case itself was certainly worth something, even with a broken lock. Leaving it under the fragrantly flowering bush, he went once more into the station, this time to beg a length of used twine from his fellow Huli kinsman. With the lock broken, he needed something to secure the case.

When he returned, something inside was beeping persistently.

Slowly and with commendable caution, he opened the case. The noise was coming from one of the small electronic gadgets. Gingerly hefting the rectangular shape, he turned it over in his hands. It was about the size of two packs of cigarettes. On its front were a large number of illuminated b.u.t.tons above which a small yellow light was blinking.

This he eyed in astonishment, wondering how anyone could manufacture so small a bulb.

Could the device hurt him? He knew he should find a way to stop the beeping, or he might draw unwanted attention to himself. The Mosby police were not gentle with thieves, especially those who stole from visiting Europeans. He had seen how b.u.t.tons could turn a radio on and off. Perhaps one of the b.u.t.tons on the box could do the same to the insistent beeping sound.

Experimentally, he began pushing them one after another. Each time he depressed a b.u.t.ton, it responded with an electronic chirp, but the continuous beeping never stopped--until he pushed one of the b.u.t.tons near the bottom. Not only did the nerve wracking beeping cease, but the yellow light turned to green.

"Stavros, Stavros .. . was 1st mit ihnen los? Sprechen she , dammit!"

Wahgi almost dropped the device. Then he realized what it was: some kind of telephone, but unlike any he had ever seen before. For one thing, it was infinitely smaller than the ones that were fixed in the public boxes. For another, it was attached to nothing.

From it issued a voice that was as clear as it was unintelligible.

"Stavros!" The tone was angry and insistent.

Maybe, he thought, there might be a reward for such a unique and therefore probably expensive telephone.

Could he make the irate individual on the other end understand him?

Leaning toward the device without knowing where to direct his voice, he said in his best rudimentary English, "h.e.l.lo. Good morning. How are you? Yupela want ok me?"

This resulted in a long silence from the tiny telephone, and Wahgi wondered if he had somehow broken it by speaking into it. Then the voice returned, no longer irate but obviously confused. Confused and curious.

"Ya? Stavros? So you are now speaking English? Warum--why?"

Stavros, Wahgi decided, must be the name of one of the four men who he had seen fighting. The owner of the case, or at least its keeper. And like the man on the other end of the line, he had spoken English-as well as other things.

"I no--I am not Stavros," he informed the telephone.

"I am Wahgi."

There followed another extended pause that was broken by a stream of furious foreign syllables that the Huli decided he would not have been able to follow even if he had understood the alien tongue. Then another interlude, after which a new voice spoke. It was much more controlled, much calmer than its predecessor, and its English was far better. To Wahgi it sounded like American English, not Aussie or British, but he could not be certain. Sometimes it seemed to him that there were as many varieties of English as there were languages in Papua New Guinea.

"To whom am I speaking, please? You said that your name was Wahgi?"