Smokedawg “Tales of the Poisoned World: Balance of Power”

About the Author

J. Jefferson (aka Smokedawg) is a middle-aged editor and journalist manifesting his mid-life crisis with a flurry of fiction writing instead of a sports car and trophy mistress. He began work on a sci-fi novel in 2008, then fell into erotica in 2009 by starting his blog ”Better With Smoke” (http://betterwithsmoke.wordpress.com) before branching out to the Smoking Fetish Kingdom, the Celis T. Rono Writer’s Collective, SmokingStories, and elsewhere with smoking and non-smoking erotica, as well as non-erotic fare. You can e-mail him at: pseudojeff@msn.com.

He began his “Poisoned World” stories with the “Venomous Passions” trilogy at: http://betterwithsmoke.wordpress.com/category/venomous-passions-trilogy/

His first stand-alone “Tales of the Poisoned World” story, which precedes this one chronologically, is here on Celis T. Rono’s blog, at: http://celisrono.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/smokedawg-tales-of-the-poisoned-world-expressions-of-power/

Tales of the Poisoned World:

Balance of Power

It was an long-held axiom that the City Administrator always worked hours later than the Executive Mayor did. That axiom was taken to an extreme in Danica’s case; she was forever at the mayoral offices cleaning up some political mess that Oswald K. Drummond IV had left, or dealing with some inane duty that he had foisted on her.

Almost all of it was petty vengeance in the end—for Danica being a woman and thus inferior by the standards of Oswald’s circle of wealthy and highly religious peers; for having been indirectly involved in his failure to bring the Sprawls to heel two years earlier; and for the fact she was gearing up to unseat him in the next set of mayoral elections in another couple years.

She was patient, though. It was a trait that had gotten her on the fast track to her current position; it was one that would carry her into the Executive Mayor position either this election cycle or next—depending on how quickly voters realized what a huge mistake it was to elect someone from the upper stratas instead of the mid-level ones—especially an upper-strata religious zealot. Her skill at patience and handling challenges would likely be enough to keep her in the office for two or three terms at least once she secured it.

That was the theory, at least.

Huang dusk-Chi’s theory. And her own assessment of the city and her capabilities. Also the theory of several artificial intelligence computer models paid for at great expense to Huang’s family.

But theories are just theories until proved to be fact, even ones from cutting-edge AI computers, she reminded herself.

Tired but satisfied that tomorrow would at least begin on the right notes thanks to her efforts tonight, Danica Peters headed for the foyer of the GovSec building on her way to a dinner meeting with Huang about upcoming campaign-related machinations.

She nodded to the security team at the front desk, then paused, looked around briefly, and held out her hands in a gesture of expectation and befuddlement.

“There’s a series of bugs in the Guardian system again, Admin Peters,” the lead guard told her, an expression of apology in his eyes. “Worse than the other week. You’ll have to head out to your car without a gearhead, I’m afraid. Do you need one of us to head out with you instead?”

Leaving this late, a city officer of her stature—or even slightly below it—was pretty much expected to walk out with an automaton companion to guard her at least until she was off premises entirely, so there was no weakness in that. But taking away a human guard from his duties to do the same would look soft, so she shook her head as she extracted one of her Femmeboro Citrons and ignited it with her hotpen, enjoying the flood of citrusy smoke into her lungs. As she pulled the long cigarette from her lips and exhaled, she said, lightly, “It’ll be a nice change of pace not to hear the soft whir of servos next to me for once.”

It was true enough. Going out onto the street alone at night to leave the complex was something she hadn’t done in several years now, so it would be a novel experience.

The air was chill, but fresher than normal. A hard rain had fallen earlier in the day, followed by some firm winds, and so for one of those rare nights, a few stars were hazily visible in the night sky, and the moon was more than just an amorphous, blurry light behind muddy clouds. You could actually make out its craters and basins tonight, even if they seemed slightly out of focus.

She was 100 meters out from the foyer, and almost half again that distance away from the drop-gate for her vehicle, when the elaborate clasp-and-brooch assembly for her cloak suddenly came apart, reconfigured as a tiny hawk on her shoulder, and let out a warble-and-whistle cry.

Danica had trained with the cloak often enough and with its PI system—the pseudo-intelligence computer built into it—to understand the notes. Danger behind. Duck to right and run.

Only twice before had her defcloak warned her of impending attack from behind. Once she had ignored it, and turned to face her potential assailant, because the danger whistle was minor—and that woman had earned a nasty faceful of stunspray, while Danica strode away calmly. The second time, the danger message had only been slightly more intense, and Danica had simply fled to safety.

This time, the danger whistle was very nearly a shriek, and she didn’t hesitate. Because aside from the intensity of the warning—and thus the PI’s appraisal of the threat—she realized that an attack like this, right when the Guardian system was down and she was unescorted, seemed way too coincidental.

So, she not only ducked and ran, but said, softly and firmly, as she flicked away her cigarette: “Bloodhunt.”

The activation word spoken, the cloak disengaged from her throat, and dropped to the ground. Danica felt and heard something whiz past her, just to the side and roughly where her shoulders had been mere moments ago, and she dashed briefly into the street, then back to the sidewalk, and toward her drop-gate, pressing the button on her pocket-fob so that her car would begin its descent and startup immediately.

She didn’t need to look back to know what her defcloak was doing; she’d seen a couple demonstrations at the armory-shop years ago. Before it hit the ground, molecular seams had come undone, polymer fibers had reconfigured, and carbon-strands had stiffened and reshaped themselves. Her sienna cloak with its subtle and beautiful Hopi-inspired designs in shades of umber, cyan, red and purple had become something that looked a lot more like the skeleton of a dog-sized spider, with each leg ending in a razor-sharp tip.

Danica didn’t need to look back to see that, but she did want to make sure there weren’t multiple pursuers, since a defcloak tended to have problems with more than one or two opponents at a time.

What she could see, in the shadowy scuffle near a streetlamp, was that she had been stalked by only one person. Judging by the dark, liquid sprays arcing into the diffuse light, he or she wasn’t wearing body armor, and Danica hoped that whatever god the potential attacker worshipped—if any—was ready for a new soul.

On the way to her car, still running, she saw on the ground the squirming tendrils of the tangler that had been fired at her, and she cursed Oswald’s name several times until she was in her car, several blocks away, and able to breathe normally again. She lit a fresh Citron, and drove toward the Gray Zion sprawlhood.

* * *

Meeting Huang in the Sprawls was a necessity, though it made her uncomfortable, even this close to the border. As an Outlier, he was sporting a multitude of illegal genetic modifications, and outside of a sprawlhood, all it would take for him to be arrested would be one smile showing the twin fangs that were typical of a feratu, or someone noticing the amber eyes so common to Vamp Outliers in general.

So far, five minutes into their meeting, they had only traded general pleasantries, and Danica was kind of enjoying the notion that, for once, she might have Huang in a position of awkwardness, and not the other way around. Usually, by now, she would be squirming and sweating a little—and showing other signs of arousal, just the way he liked things. Not so tonight.

She smiled vaguely in Huang’s direction, and put on a pair of glasses as she perused the menu that had so recently been delivered to her. That broke the silence, as Huang asked, “You have developed vision problems, my dear Danica, since last we met?”

Danica waited almost 10 seconds to answer, then looked at him from over the top of her menu with a bored expression. “No, and I’m sure your family and its allies have razored deeply enough into my private records to know at least that much about my medical history. Just a nice, new pair of spectors.”

“I can assure you I haven’t asked the waiter to slip anything into your appetizer,” he said with a blazingly white grin. Huang was handsome, but the fangs reminded Danica that his genetic mods made him scarcely human anymore. Or at least not homo sapien.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I’m reminded of the bitter taste—oh so faint—in my drink not so long ago, that I’m sure was erosinol,” she responded sweetly, “forcing me to have to go order a replacement from the automated bartender, which of course couldn’t be bribed by you. I’m still not interested in fucking you, willingly or under chemical influence.”

“Oh, that was months ago, Danica,” he said.

“Yes, it was,” she said, adjusting the settings on her spectors to filter out her own cigarette smoke, filling the air between them, and added, after looking at him for several moments, “I’m sure you won’t have my drink spiked. Now, how about you turn off the narcodisiac feed into your belt hookah, since I don’t want your smoke dulling my senses, either.”

“You are so suspicious of motives,” Huang responded. “You will do so well as an elected official. Those must be very expensive spectors to have detected such trace fumes in my smoke.”

“Yes, purchased thanks to the large and ever-growing campaign fund you and other supporters have been feeding me.”

“Those funds are, you realize, intended for campaign-related activities,” he noted.

“And I consider my personal safety and security a very important campaign activity, which is why I purchased two backup pairs of spectors, too,” Danica said sweetly. “Light body armor, too, to wear under my clothes, which will be delivered next week.”

“I cannot help but notice that the spectors and forthcoming undergarments are not your only fashion change,” Huang noted dryly. “Where is your ever-present cloak? You weren’t wearing it when you entered the restaurant.”

“It would have been rude to wear a blood-stained garment, even in the most rot-gut Sprawl establishment,” she answered mildly, and smiled. “I think I might try the fried synthfish with shallots tonight.”

“Blood?” Huang asked, intrigued, licking his lips at the thought. “I did not know that you found interest in such activities. Or was it homicidal rather than recreational?”

“Well, I didn’t commit the homicide; my cloak did.”

It was Danica’s happiest moment of the past year or two to leave Huang temporarily at a loss for words. When he recovered, he said, “That was a defcloak? Did you buy that with campaign funds as well? With this kind of spending, you’ll never win the election.”

“No, I didn’t buy it, but when I decided to run for office, at your not-so-subtle urgings and very subtle threats, my parents and extended family took up a huge collection from all the relatives and bought it for me a year-and-a-half ago. I’ll owe a lot of cousins and such a lot of good jobs when I’m elected. Good thing, too, for them getting me the cloak, since I suspect my assailant tonight was up for a robbery-murder. Maybe rape for good measure. Tangler aimed at my head and neck.”

“Good for your defcloak, then. How did you manage to deal with the police questioning and still make it here on time?”

“The defcloak will have run to the nearest precinct station to be debriefed by a law enforcement AI. The police can wait to talk to me tomorrow. They’ll see the cloak belongs to me when they run the registration. Shit, if DeiboCorp wants me to sign off on the contract for them to handle the civic sector police work again for the next five years, they won’t hassle me. I’ve already messaged them that I’ll give them a statement tomorrow afternoon.”

“You are very calm for someone who almost didn’t live to try the synthfish,” Huang noted.

“I’m learning to deal with adversity these past couple years, since you entered my life,” she answered. “Plus, a pack of anxiolytic gum from a corner pharmastore helped. Even the over-the-counter stuff takes the edge off quite nicely. Chewed up half the sticks on the way over.”

The waiter came, and Danica changed her mind at the last minute, ordering a cream-and-shrimp fettuccini. She munched on a slice of focaccia from the small bread basket, and looked Huang pointedly in the eyes.

After a few moments, he caught her cue, and chuckled, then touched her wrist lightly. “And, aside from all these new fashion statements, what else have you done, my dear, since I see that your pupils are not overly dilated, and your pulse rate is quite normal. I suppose your panties don’t have a whiff of cream in them, either?”

“No, they don’t. I’ve rather tired of having to deal with the distractions of your damned pheromones, and had a sexually agreeable medtech give me a nice prescription to deal with them.”

“Danica, those kinds of meds are highly regulated. Tsk tsk tsk.”

“Are you going to tell on me, Huang? Scuttle your best chance at unseating Oswald next term?”

“No, of course not. But I am disappointed. I do so want to bed you. I haven’t had a woman play so hard-to-get since I was a lad and barely had any pheromones to employ in my seductions. But it does perhaps mean that next time, I’ll have to invite Astarte to our dinner meeting. I have yet to meet any med that can counter an incubus or succubus’ pheromones, especially hers.”

“If I ever see Astarte or any other member of your family that’s that highly placed and that dangerous to my autonomy—at any meal you or I share between now and the day I die—I’ll pull out my stunspray baton, empty it in your face, and slit your throat with the closest knife on the table.”

“Please, Danica, your spunkiness is positively arousing. You’re going to make me have an accident in my pants.”

“Save your expressions of affection for helping me out with my problem.”

“Which problem? It sounds as if your problem tonight is dead.”

“Yes, but I was only attacked because the Guardian system was down and I wasn’t accompanied by an automaton. Kind of suspicious timing. I suspect Oswald hired someone to kill me and make me look like the victim of a random violent crime.”

“Given that you’re not only still alive but completely uninjured, it is more likely he hired someone to kill you, and that person wisely outsourced the task to some street-rag to test your mettle, since the original assassin likely knew how risky it would be to strike a political candidate.”

“Either way, the solution is to deal with Oswald.”

“I told you before, many times, that there is too much risk to the Sprawls and the Outlier families to assassinate a political figure. If it were ever traced to us, we’d be branded terrorists and the Sprawls would be overrun with FedCops and military. We can hold local law enforcement out, but not a full invasion.”

“I don’t want him dead, Huang. I prefer that he simply wish he were, and I know just how to do that. But it’s expensive.”

“And not something you can purchase with campaign funds?”

“As you said, I can’t keep spending on accessories if I want win.”

* * *

“Why is my thorn not removed from my side, and why did you purchase such a useless pair of tweezers?” the Executive Mayor of New Philadelphia asked, voice level, but laced with layers upon layers of malice, disappointment and threat.

“Sir, he…I mean, the tweezers…” began Jervis Waters, Oswald Drummond’s personal aide.

“Oh, speak plainly, Jervis, and quickly. This office is shielded against eavesdroppers and I just swept the room for devices,” Oswald growled. “I don’t actually want you speaking in code. I’m not that patient.”

“The dead man isn’t the person whom I hired, sir,” Jervis said.

“You’re saying that she was attacked randomly by an idiot armed with a tangler gun before the assassin could do her in?”

“No sir,” Jervis answered. “In fact, the original contractor called me not very long ago and berated me for giving him poor intelligence about Danica. He was quite angry that we didn’t tell him she had a high-grade defcloak, which would have put him in a great deal of peril had he been the one to attack her trying to make it look like some common street crime.”

“Our lack of information in the dossier aside, why did he give the task to some thieving, raping Silverscream addict?” Oswald pressed.

“Because he says he doubted the completeness of our intelligence to begin with, and wasn’t about to risk himself for a fee only slightly above his nominal rate. He told me that if we want the job done, he’s clearly going to have to do his own intelligence. He also says that Danica is clearly smarter and more well-connected than we have let on. And he notes that he will have to go to rather extreme extra expense to end her life in a manner that doesn’t look like an assassination, now that there has already been an attempt on her life.”

“So, he didn’t trust us, hired someone else to do the wetwork, we end up with a botched job, and he’s going to hold us over a barrel to pay more so that the murder he semi-intentionally botched can go right the second time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How much is he asking more?” Oswald asked.

Jervis told him, and earned a sharp and long whistle from the mayor.

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t have you fired, and perhaps maimed beforehand, for hiring such a man?” Oswald asked.

“Because he is highly recommended; he was good enough to realize we weren’t telling him enough about Danica even without doing his own intelligence work; and because if Danica puts the numbers together and we don’t secure him first with more money, her Outlier friends might hire him to kill you for trying to kill her.”

“The third possibility is slim to the vanishing point, Jervis, but I give you credit for trying to use my instinct for self-preservation to save your own ass,” Oswald said. “Tell him I am very disappointed that he chose to play my hand early—on his own initiative—just to prove a point and drive up his price, and tell him I am weighing my options for a more competent contractor. Chances are that he will ignore us for several days, and then come back with a less predatory fee. I’m almost willing to pay what he’s asking, but I didn’t become as rich as I did by  being a sloppy businessman. Besides, we’ll need a few weeks for things to cool down before anything can be done against her again anyway.”

Shortly thereafter, Oswald dismissed Jervis, and returned to his datapad, surprised to see that he had an appointment scheduled with Danica in less than 20 minutes. He hadn’t made any such appointment, and his secretary wouldn’t have either, not without telling him.

He never got the chance to inquire with his secretary or Danica as to why the appointment was in his calendar, as the tiny passenger that had rode in on Jervis’ trouser leg leapt into Oswald’s lap, then to his shoulder. He had just enough time to be startled and gasp, before the sting to his thigh and the second one to his neck sent him spiraling into the abyss.

* * *

When he awoke, he found himself naked, and strapped to the couch in his office with soft bindercord. Nothing that he could break, and nothing that would leave a single mark on him. Out of instinct, he glanced at the wall chrono, and realized he had been out only 30 or 40 minutes.

“Our meeting has been very productive so far, Oswald,” Danica said, then plopped herself down onto a chair in front of him, and lit one of her Citrons. Knowing how much he hated just about any factory produced cigarettes—especially anything from the big tobacco companies like Reynolds-Lorillard, Djarum/Liggett/Myers and PacificSpirit—she blew the smoke right into his face. “Now, let’s talk about why you’re going to stop hiring people to kill me, or otherwise do harm to my person.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, you insane bitch, but I’m certainly tempted to kill you myself right now,” he shouted. Or tried to. His voice came out as a strong croak instead.

Danica reached down, and then held up a small robot that looked all the world like a scorpion, except for having an extra set of legs. “When Skippy here gave you your nap, he also temporarily fucked up your vocal cords. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to bark orders to me fine tomorrow.”

“You’re not going to…”

“…get away with this? Please, Hollywood still won’t stop using that line in movies. Of course I will, just like you’re going to get away with hiring someone to kill me. This isn’t about blame, Oswald. Or revenge. It’s about nipping things before they get out of hand.”

“What are you on about?”

“In addition to knocking you out, and mostly shutting you up, Skippy also injected you with some very exotic baseline DNA rescripters of Outlier make. Before you have a fit, they aren’t programmed to do anything to you. However, if I should be harmed in any significant way, the individuals I am reluctantly associated with in the Sprawls will release the information that you have so successfully kept hushed up: That you lost two of your children to life among the Outliers.”

“You bitch. It won’t work…”

“Of course it will. That news alone won’t do anything to your reputation, but it will likely force you to answer some tough questions among your peers, and it will be revealed that you have Outlier rescripters in your body, which would almost certainly be seen as the foundation for having illegal forms of genetic reprogramming performed on you. Your business associates, backers, friends and family will have to assume that you condoned your children being among Outliers—rather than the truth that they were abducted to spite you—and that you craved that life yourself, and you will be ruined.”

“You think I’m going to leave something like that in my…”

“You can have a medtech neutralize the rescripters to make them unusable, but it will still take your body at least three years to actually flush them out to undetectable levels,” Danica said.

“No one will believe it. I made life hell for the Sprawls, all to get at the Outliers and have them rounded up,” Oswald pointed out.

“An effort that failed, and that in hindsight anyone could have seen would fail—except a zealot like you—and everyone will assume it was an elaborate cover for your Outlier sympathies,” Danica said. “The several deaths of police officers you ordered into the Sprawls during that attempt will be qualified as negligent homicide on your part. So will the deaths of the Fringies and Wyldthings in those skirmishes, though no one will care about them as much. It’ll still tack a few years onto your sentence, though.”

Danica smoked her Citron down to the filter, and then started smoking a second one. She wondered how long she’d have to sit there while Oswald sorted through his options, but she didn’t even get halfway through her follow-up smoke before he said, “So, now I have to make sure you stay healthy and safe, for the next three years at least.”

“More than that, sir. Much longer than that. Because now that you and I are going to have a fair competition with no assassins, I will almost certainly unseat you in the next elections, and as Executive Mayor, I will have the best people keeping a very close eye on you and your businesses.”

“What do you think is going to happen to you if you don’t win?” Oswald asked with a sinister leer. “And if you do, what about when you’re no longer in office? I have a long memory.”

As Danica began to sever the bindings that held him to the couch, she said to him, “You should get dressed, sir. Before someone comes in here and gets the wrong idea about our private meeting. And you shouldn’t worry so much about me, anyway. I’ve survived New Philly politics since years before you even got it into your head to run for office to conduct your private crusades. Once you’re back in your moneyed city-sector for a few years assessing all your flexaccounts and figuring out new ways to spend your wealth, you’ll forget about little ole me.”

The glaring look her gave her suggested otherwise, and she shrugged.

“Well, maybe you won’t. But if not, I can always vanish into the Sprawls, right? Or maybe, just maybe, another one of your sons will instead, so that I won’t have to.” Danica paused for effect before she added: “You’re a good businessman, Oswald, even if you are terrible at being a man. I know you’ll get the cost-benefit analysis right in the end, now that you know all the variables.”

She patted him on the thigh, smiled and left the room on steady legs, silently thanking all the powers of the pharmaceutical R&D world for the prescription anti-anxiety meds that were currently making that possible.

It still took her an hour to work up the nerve to call Huang, even with the anxiolytics bolstering her. And it still galled her that he was going to make her pay personally for this special bit of help.

“Huang?” she said when he answered the call, “Skippy did great. You can collect your payment at my apartment. You’ve got two hours once you step inside, there will be no biting, and I categorically refuse to scream your name even if your performance deserves it. Oh, and bring a damned bouquet. I’m a mayoral candidate, for God’s sake.”

She hung up, and sighed. As much as she hated to admit it, she was starting to look forward to doing battle with Oswald in the polls, and with Huang under the sheets. Both of them one-time affairs, and she wondered which would be more memorable.