Heart and Soul: A Vinnie De Soth Case
She shimmied into Vinnie de Soth's office like every Marlowe dream the young consulting occultist had ever had, a radiant vision in a tight red dress. She ducked low under the overhanging staircase beam leading from Alto Tumour's bookshop up to a suspicious tanning parlour with no tan beds and approached the cluttered little desk in the alcove beyond.
"Mister De Soth?" she asked in Ava Gardner tones.
Vinnie handed her one of his business cards in confirmation. "That should be arcane not arcade there in the small print," he warned her. "I don't actually fix slot machines. Except that one time, and then there was a gremlin jammed in the coin slot. Um, unless you pay for getting slot machines fixed, in which case I'm your man."
"Mister De Soth, I have a problem," breathed the platinum blonde.
"Also, for exercise you should read exorcise. I kind of got the cards cheap from a friend of Alto's. You can't really get rid of demons by making them do jumping jacks, although that can be kind of funny in a cruel sort of way." Vinnie realised that he'd flipped into beautiful-woman-nearby random babble and forced himself to take a deep breath. "How may I help you?"
"Mister De Soth, it's my boyfriend."
"Ah." Beautiful Marlowe-standard platinum blondes with Ava Gardner voices always had boyfriends. Vinnie reminded himself that he was already seeing someone.
The blonde handed over a photograph of a far-too-handsome athletic young man with designer stubble. "This is Axel. I think... I think he may have got me in trouble."
"And now he's disappeared?" Vinnie guessed. "Look, first thing, it's not the end of the world. If you go down to the GMY Foundation they have a free clinic, they can confirm your pregnancy, give you some medical advice..."
"Not that kind of trouble," snapped the blonde. "What kind of girl do you think that I am?"
"Er, sorry," Vinnie winced. "So, um, maybe we should start again? I'm Vinnie De Soth. Like the card says, I'm a jobbing occultist. Hauntings, psychic questings, problem boggarts, family curses, I'm your man. In fact I'm specially experienced at family curses. So what is your problem, Miss...?"
"Call me Peri," offered the girl. She made it sound like an invitation to an intimate weekend for two on a tropical island. "Axel and I have been together for nearly two years now. We met through work and then one day we realised how our feelings for each other had grown and... we fell in love."
"That's really nice," admitted Vinnie. "But...?"
"But I think Axel may have been a bit dumb. He's a real nice guy but his brains aren't really in his head, y'know, the big mook. I guess neither of us are that equipped for the heavy thinking. Anyhow, Axel cut this deal to get us out of our contracts with Mr Lodestone and..."
Vinnie recognised the name. "Lodestone? Lionel Lodestone, the so-called Viceroy of Vice? Big fat sleazy zillionaire who runs half the porn industry?"
Peri nodded. "Axel and I were in adult entertainment," she admitted. "We met on set."
"Okay," Vinnie said. That explained why Alto Tumour was hanging around behind the end-times pamphlet rack trying to get a picture of the woman on his iPhone. The young occultist surreptitiously waved him away. It didn't quite explain Vinnie's primal attraction to the girl in the red dress, although she certainly had plenty to be attracted to.
"Axel and I wanted out. We just wanted to go far away, to be together, to have a life. But nobody just walks away from Mr Lodestone. He's a powerful man, with powerful connections."
Vinnie still wasn't seeing how somebody specialising in feng shui realignments could help the dazzling blonde. "I could refer you to a good P.I. I know," he offered. "Or a couple of fairly dubious lawyers."
Peri shook her head. "You don't understand. Mr Lodestone owned us. There was only one way for us to get free, so Axel took it. He didn't tell me at the time what he'd done, but now I know. And that's why we need you."
"What did he do?" Vinnie asked. He had a sinking feeling.
"The only way for Axel to get us free was... he sold our souls to the Devil. And now we have to pay."
***
Peril and Axel's apartment wasn't much bigger than the little cupboard that Vinnie called home. Three strides wide and five strides long with a kitchen alcove and a shared bathroom along the hall, the Hell's Bathroom tenement was lit only by a single barred window looking out onto a burned out high-rise.
But there were signs, Vinnie noted, signs that someone had really tried to make this place home. The walls had been stencilled with little bluebells. The curtains were homemade and someone had tried to cross-stitch them with fancy edgings. A new shelf had been hand-turned and placed on the cheap partition wall. A line of self-help books were stacked along its length.
"Axel's not here," Peri worried. "He said he was going to try and straighten things out, try and get us a little more time before we have to die."
Vinnie perched on the edge of the low bed. The mattress creaked alarmingly. "Maybe you should tell me what happened from the beginning?" he suggested. "I need to know what kind of deal was cut. Is there a signed parchment manuscript? Was blood used? Which devil holds your spiritual equity? What's the stipulated mechanism for collection? Who's the intermediary agent? If it's Daimon Soulshredder again I swear this time he's not even going to be a primate by the time I'm done with him."
Peri shook her head. "I don't know much about that. You need to wait for Axel." She looked around the little shabby apartment then bit her lip uncertainly. "But since Axel's not around... about your payment..."
Vinnie looked up in panic at the sound of the dress zipper. "What are you doing?"
"Listen, Mr De Soth... Axel and me, we don't have a lot of cash. I don't know about your fees but... I mean, if there's a way to work out some in-kind payment...?" She blushed and looked away then forced herself to look back. "I haven't been with anybody but Axel since we got free, not even when we really needed the cash, but I'll do anything to save him."
"That's not necessary," Vinnie assured her. "Really. I'm not that sort of jobbing occultist. We can... well, there's a long list of people who haven't yet paid me for my work. An incredibly long list. We'll work something out. Just not... that something. So... put away your... trade goods, okay?"
Peri didn't seem relieved. "Axel's very handsome, I suppose, if that's what you like..."
"No," said Vinnie quickly and firmly. "I don't demand sex for helping people. For starters it's icky and second my girlfriend wouldn't like it. So let's just assume that you need help and I can give it and we'll settle up later if you can afford it and not before, okay? You've seen how I live. I don't have an expensive lifestyle to maintain."
Peri sat down on the bed beside him and began to cry. "I'm not used to this," she confessed. "I'm not used to people being nice. Nobody was ever nice to me or Axel when we belonged to Mr Lodestone. That's not why they wanted us. And since we broke free it's so hard, to get a job, to make a living..."
"Don't cry, Peri." Vinnie reached out a comforting hand then withdrew it again. He didn't want to send the wrong messages. "Look, I'm totally hired, okay? I'm on the case. I just don't know what the case is. You said you had to die? What the hell - and I use the word in the specific technical sense - did Axel set you up for?"
Peri blew her nose, quivering spectacularly, and dried her eyes. "I don't know the details. Axel was the one who set up whatever it was. All I know was that one day he came to me and said 'Peri, you don't need to do this anymore. We can be free. Let's run.' So we did. And of course, when Mr Lodestone's men caught up with us there was nothing they could do."
Vinnie could imagine all kinds of horrible things a ruthless man with unlimited thugs could do to helpless people who crossed him. "Was protection from Lodestone part of the pact that Axel made for you, maybe?"
"After the ceremony we didn't belong to Mr Lodestone any more. Of course, he might not be able to legally claim us as his property but Mr Lodestone can still do all kinds of things to make sure you don't work in this town, to make life shitty and horrible for you..."
"Hold on, time out," Vinnie called. "When and how could Lionel Lodestone ever claim you as his legal property? Or anybody?"
Peri blinked away more tears and looked at Vinnie with her big brown eyes. "Back when we were his sex robots," she answered.
***
"Peri, this is Tandi. Tandi, this is Peri," said Vinnie de Soth. The two women looked at each other over a table at the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar.
"Nice to meet you," said Tandi brightly. The perky young woman was slightly slimmer than the platinum blonde but had that same factory-perfect body and movie-star looks. "I don't know exactly why I'm meeting you but..."
"Tandi, can you scan Peri?" asked Vinnie.
"Sure, at least some. Is that okay with you, Peri? I can only do heartbeat, hormonal secretions, respiratory safety, that kind of thing."
"You're a 9000 series sexbot," Peri recognised. "Pervo Industries."
"I was a 6000 series but I got some upgrades a while back. And I don't do the sexbot thing now. Well, not professionally anyhow. I got liberated by De Brown Streak. I've moved on." She turned to Vinnie. "Peri's perfectly normal. What am I supposed to be detecting?"
"She's a perfectly normal what?" Vinnie demanded.
"A perfectly normal human woman," answered Tandi.
"You actually met De Brown Streak?" asked Peri. "What was he like?"
"If I may," interrupted Vinnie. "Thing is, Tandi, Peri here claims she was a robot just like you, until about eighteen months back."
"I was a Hung Technologies Model XX, designate Peripheral 93357-F. Axel was the Model XY with the turbo-boost add-on."
"I don't want to know about that," shuddered Vinnie. "Thing is, Tandi, Peri seems completely flesh and blood now. She claims that somehow she and her boyfriend got turned into humans through some kind of arcane process, which is how they could run away from their servitude to Lodestone Adult Entertainments."
"We don't have green cards though," Peri confessed. "It makes it kind of hard for us to survive."
"I could maybe help out with that," offered Tandi. "I know Hallie."
"Hallie?" puzzled Peri. "Not... the Hallie. Hallie One?"
"She just goes by Hallie, but yeah, that Hallie. World's foremost artificial intelligence computer sentience helps-the-Lair-Legion-save-the-world Hallie. She could probably get you some papers or something. Maybe jobs at Bautista International if you don't mind the risk. Or something with Wilton Holdings in the UK?"
"That would be..." Peri's face changed mid-sentence, "impossible. Axel made this deal you see, to get us transmuted to flesh. We sold our souls. Who even knew we had souls?"
Tandi's eyebrows raised. "That old rumour's true? Somebody can actually do that?"
"What old rumour?" Vinnie asked. "Share the old rumour please."
Tandi 9000 snorted. "It's a real urban myth amongst the robo-community, almost as pervasive as the tales of the Prime Engine or the Breaker's Boys. If you can find him there's a droid who can hook you up with an organic transference mechanism, can give you flesh and blood. No more passing for human, no more worrying about anti-robot brainwiping legislation, no more being legal property enslaved for whatever your owner wants to do to you. You're Pinocchio. Suddenly you're a real boy or girl. But it's just a myth."
"That's what I thought too," admitted Peri. "Until..." She held up her hands to demonstrate fingers with veins and tendons. "But the price..."
"Is too much," Vinnie frowned. "We need to find Axel."
"We have souls to sell?" Tandi said, absorbing the implications. "The Devil wants us too? We go somewhere when we die?"
"I can't prove human souls let alone robot ones," Vinnie replied, "but I can stop sleazy deals with sleazier demons. Come on."
***
The robot wore a long Trenchcoat and his skin shone like an Oscar. "The name's Dex," he told his visitors in the backroom of the illegal gambling den under the arches of the Englehart Bridge. "What's your need?"
"I'm Tandi. This is my... my human friend, Vinnie."
Dex gave the young occultist a leer that summed up everything he'd concluded about a flesh and blood male being close friends with a Pervo industries sexbot. "He holds your papers?"
"We heard that you're the person, er, the being to come to," Vinnie said, flushing. "About, well, if you want your robot friend to be more... fleshy."
Dex leaned back on his leopardskin couch and snickered. "Well, it can be done, but it's never cheap. You talking a full conversion or just some key areas."
"Key areas?" Tandi blinked.
"Yeah. Transplant surgery, babe. Kind of the reverse of a fleshy becoming a cyborg. We find a donor who don't need her erogenous zones no more and we... harvest them."
"That's not what we had in mind," Vinnie said, turning slightly green. "We had something more, more full-body in mind. Top of the range."
"They say you can do full conversions," said Tandi in hushed tones with wide eyes. She was very good at making men believe what they wanted to believe.
Dex looked the sexbot up and down then turned his gaze on her human companion. Vinnie was a little down-at-heel. "Doesn't seem like you've got the very large amounts of cash to pay for a tech to flesh mapping transmutation," he sniffed.
Vinnie fumbled in his pocket. "I can get cash. And I have this ring to leave as collateral. It's an engagement ring that I, um, happened to have hidden away under my bed." He held out the box. "It's very old. There's not another one like it."
Dex didn't even need to open the case to scan it. "Platinum set 0.63 carat diamond, clarity SI 12, princess-cut with claw settings," he assessed. "Worth a grand, maybe, but nothing like enough for what you're wanting."
"But she said..." blurted Tandi, then fell silent.
"She?" Dex enquired. "She who? You might as well tell me, babe. I'm an Indexmaster E450. I can just go into your core and drag it out if I have to."
"No. Don't do that." Tandi backed off a little, covering her forehead. "Ow!"
Dex rubbed his brow as well. "You've got yourself some serious firewalls in there, chickie. Who you been doin' that doesn't want the data public?"
"My boss took a few security precautions, that's all," said Tandi. "Look, it's... there's this girl I know. You converted her."
Dex's head tilted sideways a little as he did a full external scan of the speakeasy beyond. "Peri 93357? Figures she'd be blabbing. Get her in here."
Vinnie turned to obey but Dex stopped him. "I wasn't talking to you." The door opened and two industrial grade robots manhandled the blonde into the backroom.
"Where's Axel?" demanded Peri urgently. "What have you done with him?"
Dex snorted and chuckled. "Is that what this is really about, then? I don't know why you pulled your buddies into this. Axel and you have bad debts, Peri, and it's time to pay up."
"What have you done with Axel?" Peri persisted.
Dex nodded to one of his robo-goons. The battle machine clanked out and returning dragging a battered-looking well-muscled male. "Peri!" shouted Axel, struggling futilely as he saw the love of his life. "You get away from her!"
Vinnie stepped forward between the robo-thugs and the former machines they restrained. "I'm guessing this is where we hear about the twist, is it?"
Dex scanned the human and dismissed him as no threat. No metahuman ability, purely average physical capacities, no weapons or equipment. "The twist is this. I've got a sweet franchise that helps poor little robots escape to wonderful lives of flesh and blood. But they need to sign away a little something for my sponsor."
"Who do you collect souls for?" Vinnie asked him. He looked over at the occult trappings on the wall. "Grimpenghast, right? He's the Teacher of Deceptions and Master of Ignorance and he just loves turning the best intentions into tragedies. He uses people's feelings for each other as weapons to damn them. Am I right?"
Dex looked more closely at the young occultist. "My patron's anonymous, but he provides the energies for the transmutation engines. But nothing's for nothing."
"We were desperate to escape Lodestone!" Axel called out. "You knew that. Of course we'd sign anything to get away from that living hell. I'd do it again to save Peri!"
"You knew the deal," said Dex. "You keep up the cash payments to me then you get to keep your souls till you die. You default, like you did..."
"We couldn't get jobs!" cried Peri. "I said I'd go back to selling myself if I had to but Axel said no, he'd never let me go through that again and..."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever," sniffed Dex. "You defaulted. So now your time's up. I get to take your souls, which means I need to snuff your bodies to get at them. That was the deal."
"That's murder now they're human!" Tandi objected.
"It's murder anyway," Vinnie argued. "But then again, we're in a hidden backroom where nobody can find us, surrounded by brutal industrial robots with no escape."
Dex ticked his finger at the acting sorcerer supreme to show that Vinnie had got it right. "You got it, kid. Fleshies who barge in here need to watch out that their parts don't end up recycled on bots with a hot bio-fetish. Mechanicals what get on my wrong side tend to end up with major software downgrades using a pickaxe." He looked at Axel and Peri. "Of course, there's always the possibility of renegotiating the deal."
The former robots looked up. "What do you mean?" asked Axel.
"You're not the first bots to get yourself in this pickle," Dex told them. "Not the hundredth. Lots of mechanicals want the sweet escape of humanity. More and more of 'em as the talk of robot lobotomisation legislation gets louder. Business is booming. And there's always those what can't keep up their payments."
"So you sacrifice them to this Grimpenghast?" snarled Tandi.
Dex smiled like a shark. "Well, that's up to them. They get a choice, see? Like Peri and Axel here. They can die right here, right now, and taking as fact for the moment the idea that robots have souls and those souls can be dragged to hell then that's what happens. Game over. Lots of eternal screaming. I have it on bad authority that it's not a picnic down there."
Peri began to cry again.
"Or..." went on the Indexmaster E450, "we could work out a payment plan that keeps my instalments coming and keeps the pitchforks at bay."
"I'll pay your price," Axel promised. "You know I will. Anything. Just let Peri go."
Dex shook his head. "Don't work like that, buster. You see, you didn't hear about me by accident. That tip you got to find me and make the deal wasn't from some helpful buddy. It originally came from your boss Lodestone."
"We escaped Mr Lodestone!" Peri insisted.
Dex smirked. "Did you now? Or did he let you go free range for a while to ripen you up? Y'see, good quality sexbots are fine, and they're very programmable. But real flesh and blood workforce with all the experience and expertise of a sexbot, now that's valuable. And real flesh and blood workforce shipped away to Thailand or Mexico to work every day remembering what they had and what they gave up and watching the tatters of their dreams fade away, and knowing that everything they did was for nothing and they're damned to eternity when their sad painful life is done... that's Mr Lodestone's idea of a party."
"No!" shouted Axel, struggling futilely with his captor. Even when he'd been a robot he'd not have been strong enough to stand a chance with these machines.
"That's wicked!" objected Tandi. "How could you do that to another being?"
Dex laughed. "Honestly, sweetcheeks, I kind of like it."
Vinnie swallowed hard. "Well, I guess Tandi and I had better be going then. This doesn't sound like something we'd really want to be involved in. It was, er, well not exactly nice meeting you Mr Dex but..."
A large robo-thug was blocking the door.
"You're not going anywhere, human," Dex warned him. "You and the 9000 are part of the deal now."
"Let me go," Vinnie pleaded. "Look, have the ring. Have everything in the box. It's yours. Just let me leave."
Dex snatched the case from the trembling young man. "You think a grandsworth of junk will save you?" He opened the box.
"That's not all that's in there, Dex," Vinnie told him, straightening up and stepping back. "Tandi, come and hug me."
Tandi happily moved into the curve of Vinnie's arm. She had the warding necklace on but it didn't hurt to have some extra protection as Dex flicked the ring box open.
A high-pitched giggling filled the room. The naked lightbulbs overhead fused and exploded.
The robot henchman began to judder and fizz.
"What was in the box as well as that ring you indexed," Vinnie explained to the fixer, "was about two dozen gremlins I took out of a laundrette on Ploog Street. You know, the supernatural imps that specialise in screwing up technology?"
In the club beyond an expensive sound system detonated with a shower of sparks. The PC in the corner hissed then exploded.
Axel thumped the robot behind him. If fell over with a clang and began to smoke.
Dex began to shudder too.
"I don't know why gremlins are so attracted to advanced tech," Vinnie admitted, "but they sure do enjoy playing with it."
"I think they've found his CPU," Tandi suggested, watching curiously.
"This should be good then," said Peri, shimmying free of her own trembling captor and racing to Axel.
"H-hey, wait..." stammered Dex, spasming. "S-stop them. They're del-del-deleting my files!"
"You want to do a deal?" Vinnie asked maliciously.
"Y-y-yes. P-p-pplease. It hurts!"
"Where are your contracts?" Vinnie demanded. "The papers that promise all those robots to Sage Grimpenghast?"
"They're not on paper," Peri told him. "He's an Indexmaster. They're on his hard drive. E-contracts."
"The hard drive that my gremlins are frying?" Vinnie asked. "Oh dear. Grimpenghast's not going to be happy about that. No contract no deal."
"S-s-s-s-s-s-s-ave me!" Dex gibbered as his joints began to flare.
Vinnie reached forward to the quivering silver robot but it was too late. There was a loud bang and black fumes billowed from Dex's nose and ears. His body went limp.
"Go to hell," said Peri.
"No need," said Sage Grimpenghast. "I'm here."
***
"Are you okay?" Flapjack, major domo at the Lair Mansion asked as the house's banshee took a sudden intake of breath.
"I think so," Marie Murcheson said, trying not to stagger, "but Vinnie De Soth is in mortal danger!"
***
Vinnie pushed Tandi behind him as Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Ignorance and Teacher of Deceptions turned to look at them. Grimpenghast looked almost human, an ascetic scholar in a skull cap; except his eyes contained they abyss.
"I don't usually make personal collections," the demon lord admitted, "but in this case I decided to make an exception."
Peri clung to Axel. "Is that...?"
"He's what you think he is," said Vinnie. "But there are rules that restrict what he can do in this dimension. Ancient laws that are rigorously enforced."
Grimpenghast seemed almost amused. "By you?"
"If I have to. Are you going to give me an excuse?"
The old scholar swayed his head from side to side. "Today I shall simply collect my dues and be gone. Those two young people are mine, as well as poor fried Dex."
The gremlin activity had stopped. The little spirits had fled in terror.
"Peri and Axel? Where are their contracts with you?" insisted Vinnie.
"They were electronic contracts," sneered Grimpenghast. "There are backups."
"As worthless as photocopies of your blood-signed parchments, and you know it. All the deals Dex made with you are fried, null and void, including any you've already collected on."
"Because you say so?"
"Because that's the truth. You might not have heard of this thing called truth, but that's it."
Grimpenghast moved up very close to Vinnie's face. "Pride," he recognised. "I like to see pride in a young sorcerer. I like what it comes before."
"Peri," Vinnie called. "Would you give your life and even your soul to save Axel?"
The blonde swallowed hard. "I guess," she trembled. "Y-yes."
"What about you, Axel. Would you do that for Peri?"
"Yes."
"For better or worse?"
"Yes."
"For richer or poorer? In sickness and in health?"
"Sure."
"Both of you? Forsaking all others and cleaving only to each other for as long as you both shall live?"
"Yes."
Vinnie moved even closer to Grimpenghast. "Oh dear. You hear that? They've each agreed to sacrifice their lives and souls for the other. You know what we call that, theologically? You known what Reverend Mac Fleetwood will call it when I march them down to the Zero Street Mission tonight and make it official? Marriage. Their souls don't belong to you, Grimpenghast. They're already optioned."
"Wow," said Tandi. "That is like so romantic!"
"And do you know what Mac Fleetwood will say at the end of that service?" Vinnie asked Grimpenghast. "Do you? Dare you say it?"
"There's going to come a day of reckoning between you and me, little De Soth," warned Sage Grimpenghast. "Sooner than you expect and harder than you can imagine."
"Nope," Vinnie said, making a failure buzzer noise. "He's going to say Whom God has joined together let no-one set asunder!" He turned away from the demon lord and gestured for the others to follow him. "That's it. We're done here. Let's go."
***
"Here are your travel passes and boarding cards," Tandi told Peri and Axel. "It's a long flight to the Sudan so I brought you sandwiches too. Humans need sandwiches."
Peri hugged Tandi and then Vinnie. "I can't believe this! A whole new life, helping the Caphan Foundation Woman's Centre is Nur Al Qubbah."
"It won't be easy out there," Vinnie warned. "It's hard dangerous work for health volunteers. But I think you two have what it takes, and some very special understandings that'll be valuable for the people you help."
Axel shook his hand. "We won't let you down, Mr De Soth. That minister you took us to, he said that if we'd got souls we'd got choice, so we'd better make our choices good ones."
"If we're going to be humans then we want to be the right sort," Peri agreed, clutching Rod's arm. "We've seen so many of the wrong sort. Robots too. Thank you so much you two for being the other kind."
Tandi and Vinnie watched the couple pass through the departure lounge.
"Did you get paid in the end?" Tandi suddenly remembered.
Vinnie winced then grinned. "Those two are on the instalment plan," he decided. "I think they'll give a little back every day. Now I think I owe you a soft drink for all your help, so..."
"You don't owe me an explanations about why you had an engagement ring hidden under your bed?"
"Coincidence. Um, no need to mention it to anybody though. Anybody at all."
Tandi hung back a moment. "I asked Mac if I had a soul as well, you know," she confessed.
"What did he say?"
Tandi suppressed a secret little smile. "He said that only beings who had souls were bothered whether they had them. And that it was better to worry about being a good person now than trying to figure spiritual futures that we can't comprehend."
Vinnie chuckled ruefully. "Yeah, I get the legwork and Mac Fleetwood gets the classy punchline. Must be another Vinnie De Soth case."
He took Tandi over to the Subway for her promised orange juice.
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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