"I already told you," said Adam. "There is no need to swear."
"Sorry, it just fucking slipped out," said Zeb. No way he was going to let Adam tell him how to talk. "Trudy the Good?"
"Must've been something in it for her," said Adam in his I-am-loftily-overlooking-your-provocation voice. "If only blackmail material. Or maybe she wanted Fenella out of the way, to clear her path. My guess is she was already pregnant with you. The Church of PetrOleum doesn't sanction divorce, what with the Holy Oil at the marriage ceremony. As we know."
So now it was Zeb's fault, the death of Fenella. For having the bad taste to get himself conceived. Shit. "How did they do it?" he said. "The two of them? Did they slip arsenic into her tea, or ..." Not a decapitation, he thought, ashamed of himself. They wouldn't have gone that far.
"I don't know. I was only four. I just saw the burial."
"So all that about her being whore-pill trash, deserting her baby and so forth, that was just ..."
"It's what the congregation wanted to believe," said Adam. "And they did believe it. Bad mothers are always a good story, for them."
"Maybe we should call the CorpSeCorps," said Zeb. "Tell them to bring shovels."
"I wouldn't risk it," said Adam. "There's quite a few Petrobaptists on the force, and there are a number of OilCorps heavies on the Church board. There's a lot of overlap because of the benefits to both parties. They're agreed on the need to crush dissent. So the OilCorps would cover up for the Rev over a pure and simple wife murder that didn't per se threaten its holdings, since they'd know there'd be much credibility lost through a scandal. They'd accuse the two of us of mental instability. Shut us away, use the heavy drugs. Or, as I said - dig a couple of new holes in the rock garden."
"But we're his kids!" said Zeb, sounding about two years old even to himself.
"You think that would stop him?" said Adam. "Blood is thinner than money. He'd hear a convenient voice from God, suggesting a son sacrifice for the greater good. Remember Isaac. He'd slit our throats and set fire to us, because this time God wouldn't send a sheep."
Which was about as dark as Zeb could remember Adam ever being. "So," he said. He was out of breath, although they'd barely been moving. "Why are you telling me about this now?"
"Because if what you've said about your successful cash-diverting activities is true, we have accumulated enough money," said Adam. "Also the Church might catch you doing the diverting. Time to go, while we still can. Before they send you off to die in the tar pits," he added. "It would be called an accident. Of course."
Zeb was touched. Adam was looking out for him. He always thought further ahead than Zeb did.
They waited until the next day, when the Rev had a board meeting and Trudy was heading up the Ladies' Prayer Circle. Then they took a solarcab to the bullet train station, exchanging fake info for the benefit of the driver's flapping ears. Most of those guys were snoops, formal or informal. The script was that Adam was on his way back to Spindletop and Zeb was seeing him off. Nothing unusual in that.
From a net cafe at the station, Zeb cleaned out the Rev's Grand Cayman hidey-hole account while Adam acted nonchalant and scanned for anyone who looked too interested. Once the Rev's funds were secured and transferred, Zeb sent the infected gonad a couple of messages, using a lilypad pathway to delay potential cyberhounds as long as possible. He hacked into a men's underarm deodorant video ad, clicked on the gleaming, depilatoried stud's belly button - he'd gone through that pixel wormhole before - then skipped to a home and garden site, appropriate under the circumstances, and chose a trowel. From it he launched his messages.
The first message said, "We know who's under the rocks. Don't follow us." The second contained the details of the Rev's thefts from the Church of PetrOleum's charity initiative funds, and another warning: "Don't leave town or this goes public. Stay put and await instructions." That would give the mildewed old bugger the idea that they'd be back in touch soon for blackmail purposes, which must be their motive, and he could lie in wait for them.
"That should do it," said Adam, but Zeb couldn't resist adding a third message: a copy of the details of the Rev's Feel-iT haptic site transactions. Lady Jane Grey had been his favourite: he must have decapitated her at least fifteen times.
"Wish I could watch," said Zeb, once they were on the train. "When he opens his mail. And even better, when he finds out his Cayman bank stash is gone."
"Gloating is a character flaw," said Adam.
"Up yours," said Zeb.
He spent the trip looking out the window at the passing scenery: gated communities like the one they'd just fled, fields of soybeans, frackware installations, windfarms, piles of gigantic truck tires, heaps of gravel, pyramids of discarded ceramic toilets. Mountains of garbage with dozens of people picking through it; pleebland shanty towns, the shacks made of discarded everything. Kids standing on the shack roofs, on the piles of garbage, on the piles of tires, waving flags made of colourful plastic bags or flying rudimentary kites, or giving Zeb the finger. The odd camera drone drifted overhead, purporting to be scanning traffic, logging the comings and goings of who-knew-who. Those things were bad news if they were hunting for you specifically: he'd gathered that much from web gossip.
But the Rev wouldn't be searching for them yet. He'd still be at the board lunch, gobbling down the labmeat hors d'oeuvres and the farmed tilapia.
Hackety-hack, railroad track,
Momma's in the garden, so don't look back,
Zeb hummed. He hoped Fenella's death had been sudden, with none of the Rev's more puke-making obsessions involved.
Beside him Adam was asleep, looking even whiter and thinner than he did when awake, and more like an idealistic statue of some annoying allegorical figure: Prudence. Sincerity. Faith.
Zeb was too high for sleep. Also jittery, despite himself: they'd crossed a big thick barbed-wire line, they'd robbed the ogre, they'd made off with his treasure. There would be fury. So he kept watch.
Who killed Fenella?
A really evil fella.