CHAPTER 9

      CORKY LAPUTA THRIVED IN THE RAIN.

      He wore a long shiny yellow slicker and a droopy yellow rain hat. He was as bright as a dandelion.

      The slicker had many inside pockets, deep and weatherproof.

      In his tall black rubber boots, two layers of socks kept his feet pleasantly warm.

      He yearned for thunder.

      He ached for lightning.

      Storms in southern California, usually lacking crash and flash, were too quiet for his taste.

      He liked the wind, however. Hissing, hooting, a champion of disorder, it lent a sting to the rain and promised chaos.

      Ficus and pine trees shivered, shuddered. Palm fronds clicked and clattered.

      Stripped leaves whirled in ragged green conjurations, short-lived demons that blew down into gutters.

      Eventually, clogging drain grills, the leaves would be the cause of flooded streets, stalled cars, delayed ambulances, and many small but welcome miseries.

      Here in the blustery, dripping midday, Corky walked a charming residential neighborhood in Studio City. Sowing disorder.

      He didn’t live here. He never would.

      This was a working-class neighborhood, managerial- class at best. Intellectual stimulation in such a place would be hard to find.

      He had driven here to take a walk.

      Emergency-yellow, blazing canary, he nevertheless passed along these streets with complete anonymity, drawing as little notice as might a ghost whose substance was but a twist of ectoplasmic mist.

      He had yet to encounter anyone on foot. Few cars traveled the quiet streets.

      The weather kept most people snug indoors.

      The glorious rotten weather was Corky’s fine conspirator.

      At this hour, of course, most residents of these houses were away at work. Toiling, toiling, with stupid purpose.

      Because this was a holiday week, children had not gone to school. Today: Monday. Christmas: Friday. Deck the halls.

      Some children would be in the company of siblings. A lesser number would be under the protection of a nonworking mother.

      Others were home alone.

      In this instance, however, children were not Corky’s avenue of expression. Here, they were safe from the yellow ghost passing among them.

      Anyway, Corky was forty-two. Kids these days were too savvy to open their doors to strange men.

      Welcome disorder and lovely decadence had deeply infected the world in recent years. Now the lambs of all ages were growing wary.

      He contented himself with lesser outrages, just happy to be out in the storm and doing a little damage.

      In one of his capacious inner pockets, he carried a plastic bag of glittering blue crystals. A wickedly powerful chemical defoliant.

      The Chinese military had developed it. Prior to a war, their agents would sow this stuff in their enemy’s farms.

      The blue crystals withered crops through a twelvemonth growing cycle. An enemy unable to feed itself cannot fight.

      One of Corky’s colleagues at the university had accepted a grant to study the crystals for the Department of Defense. They felt an urgent need to find a way to protect against the chemical in advance of its use.

      In his lab, the colleague had a fifty-pound drum of the stuff. Corky had stolen one pound.

      He wore thin protective latex gloves, which he could easily hide in the great winglike sleeves of his slicker.

      The slicker was as much a serape as a coat. The sleeves were so voluminous that he could withdraw his arms from them, search his interior pockets, and slip into the sleeves again with fistfuls of one poison or another.

      He scattered blue crystals over primrose and liriope, over star jasmine and bougainvillea. Azaleas and ferns. Carpet roses, lantana.

      The rain swiftly dissolved the crystals. The chemical seeped into the roots.

      In a week, the plants would yellow, drop leaves. In two weeks, they would collapse in a muck of reeking rot.

      Large trees would not be affected by the quantities that Corky could scatter. Lawns, flowers, shrubs, vines, and smaller trees would succumb, however, in satisfying numbers.

      He didn’t sow death in the landscaping of every house. One out of three, in no apparent pattern.

      If an entire block of homes were blighted, neighbors might be drawn closer by the shared catastrophe. If some were untouched, they would become the envy of the afflicted. And might arouse suspicion.

      Corky’s mission was not merely to cause destruction. Any fool could wreck things. He intended also to spread dissension, distrust, discord, and despair.

      Occasionally a dog barked or growled from the shelter of a porch where it was tethered or from within a doghouse behind a board fence or a stone wall.

      Corky liked dogs. They were man’s best friend, though why they would want to fill that role remained a mystery, considering the vile nature of humanity.

      Now and then, when he heard a dog, he fished tasty biscuits from an inner pocket. He tossed them onto porches, over fences.

      In the interest of societal deconstruction, he could put aside his love of dogs and do what must be done. Sacrifices must be made.

      You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, and all that.

      The dog biscuits were treated with cyanide. The animals would die far faster than the plants.

      Few things would spread despair so effectively as the untimely death of a beloved pet.

      Corky was sad. Sad for the luckless dogs.

      He was happy, too. Happy that in a thousand little ways he daily contributed to the fall of a corrupt order—and therefore to the rise of a better world.

      For the same reason that he didn’t damage the landscaping at every house, he didn’t kill every dog. Let neighbor suspect neighbor.

      He wasn’t concerned that he would be caught in these poisonings. Entropy, the most powerful force in the universe, was his ally and his protecting god.

      Besides, the at-home parents would be watching sleazy daytime talk shows on which daughters revealed to their mothers that they were whores, on which wives revealed to their husbands that they were having affairs with their brothers-in-law.

      With school out, the kids would be busy learning homicidal skills from video games. Better yet, the pubescent boys would be surfing the Net for pornography, sharing it with innocent younger brothers, and scheming to rape the little girl next door.

      Because he approved of those activities, Corky went about his work as discreetly as possible, so as not to distract these people from their self-destruction.