Richard Kadrey - Dog Boys.pdf - Richard Kadrey - allforjesus2001

Dog Boys

Kadrey, Richard

Published: 2002

Type(s): Short Fiction, Science Fiction

Source: http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shortshorts/kad-

rey21.html

About Kadrey:

Richard Kadrey is a novelist, freelance writer, and photographer based

in San Francisco.

Kadrey's first novel, Metrophage, was published in hardcover in 1988

by Victor Gollancz Ltd., and went on to various other American and for-

eign printings in paperback. Mac Tonnies' Cyberpunk/Postmodern Book

Reviews calls Metrophage "one of the quintessential 1980s cyberpunk

novels," going on to describe "a gritty acid-trip through an ultraviolent

L.A. where nothing is what it seems… . Alongside novels such as

[William Gibson's] Neuromancer and Lewis Shiner's debut novel

Frontera, Metrophage helped establish the cyberpunk aesthetic: relent-

less, paranoid and playfully cynical."

Kadrey's second novel, Kamikaze L'Amour, is described by the same

source as "mesmerizing… a surreal (and distinctly Ballardian) account of

synesthesia and mutant desire set in the jungle-choked ruins of L.A."

Kadrey's short story Carbon Copy: Meet the First Human Clone was

filmed as After Amy.

The publisher website, Amazon booksellers, and other sources list a

July 15, 2007 publication date for Kadrey's next book, Butcher Bird: A

Novel Of The Dominion (Night Shade Books). Other works include col-

laborative graphic novels and over 50 published short stories.

His non-fiction books as a writer and/or editor include The Catalog of

Tomorrow (Que/TechTV Publishing, 2002), From Myst to Riven

(Hyperion, 1997), The Covert Culture Sourcebook and its sequel (St.

Martin's Press, New York, 1993 and 1994); Kadrey also hosted a live in-

terview show on Hotwired in the 1990s called Covert Culture. He was an

editor at print magazines Shift and Future Sex, and at online magazines

Signum and Stim. He has published articles about art, culture and tech-

nology in publications including Wired, Omni, Mondo 2000, the San

Francisco Chronicle, SF Weekly, Ear, Artforum, ArtByte, Bookforum,

World

Art,

Whole

Earth

Review,

Reflex,

Science

Fiction

Eye,

and

Interzone.

Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks for Kadrey:

• Metrophage (1988)

• Butcher Bird (2005)

• Zombie (2002)

• SETI (2002)

• A Cautionary Tale (2002)

• Ubiquitous Computing (2002)

• Second-Floor Girls (2002)

• Bad Blood (2002)

• Kabbalah Cowboys (2002)

• The Tears of the Moon (2002)

check the copyright status in your country.

Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks.

http://www.feedbooks.com

Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes.

Setting down his drink, Cormac Thomas Garfield runs his fingers over a

deep scar on his chest. It's the site of his first harvesting, the reason he

came to Austin all those years ago. No one speaks to Cormac as he sips

straight Jack Daniels at a sunny corner table in the cafe'. Young men of

Cormac's profession tend to carry peculiar odors, and an old man such

as Cormac positively stinks.

He began his career as a Dog Boy (officially, a hinterland Canaille ),

growing botulism toxins in polymer sacs installed in his gut. Later, he

graduated to necrotizing venoms and exotic ion-channel neurotoxins.

There were worse things, too. Tiny beasts, like crabs, but with teeth. He,

along with a hundred other boys, had to vomit them out into stainless

steel tubs while men in hazmat suits stood by with guns ready to shoot

them in case it went badly and the animals began to eat their way out of

their

stomachs.

There

were

always

few

casualties

during

these

harvests.

Boys didn't last long in Cormac's profession, which saved the royal

family from having to pay for their many infirmities when they grew

old. Cormac has stubbornly, rudely, refused to die, costing the Treasury

a tidy sum. He is despised by both ordinary men and the government,

but he is a hero of the State, with a medal to prove it. His assassination,

even a convenient accident, is out of the question. His blood is so toxic

that if he were wounded in a public place, he could contaminate a whole

city sector.

Cormac has a mechanical eye — a retirement present from Prince

Samuel Patrick Houston — but it hasn't worked in years, except to inter-

mittently show him flickering gray silhouettes lost in blizzards of static.

Cormac has come to believe that these figures are the ghosts of the mil-

lions murdered in the Mexican Wars with the poisons manufactured in

his body. The ghosts are trying to tell him something, but he can't under-

stand what. He speaks to the ghosts, and the other patrons at the cafe,

already disgusted by his blackened teeth and stinking flesh, move away

from his yammering.

Cormac orders more Jack Daniels shots. He is a hero. The cafe owner

has no choice but to serve him. When Cormac starts to leave, the owner

refuses the old man's money. He leaves cash on the table anyway, but

the owner sweeps it and his glass into a plastic container and burns them

down by a canal in back of his cafe.

A few weeks later, when Cormac dies, the city secretly rejoices.

Cormac's body is incinerated in a special biohazard facility deep in the

mountains beyond El Paso. Despite this, the winds change and an acid

rain falls like metallic-smelling tar on the capital. The monsoon curdles

roads. It ruins delicate building facades and dish antennae. It erases the

faces from every public statue in the city. The runoff contaminates the

ground water, and thousands die horribly, coughing up blood and flesh-

eating spider-like things. The royal family flees the city as a strange

plague moves through the streets, killing rich and poor alike. A new crop

of Dog Boys is bought in from the provinces. The plague intrigues the

kingdom's scientists. It is a new flower to cultivate in the red gardens of

the Dog Boys' blood.

Richard Kadrey - Dog Boys.pdf

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