Fools

by Pat Cadigan

  The silence stretched for so long I was afraid he’d fainted or hung up. “You think there was a particular reason? I couldn’t see whoever this is. Maybe Moon was the first character that occurred to him, or the easiest, or both.”

  Someone slid a terminal in front of me and punched up some information on the screen. Sovay/Mopn was calling from a voice-only phone somewhere in the Downs. A blinking bar at the top of the screen informed me the trace was still in progress. You’d think that in the Age of Fast Information, you could get the really important information that much faster. Think again.

  “Consider this,” I said. “Maybe you chose Moon for this person because he felt like the Dennie Moon type.”

  Another long silence. “It’s possible,” he said at last. “I never thought of that.”

  “Can you kind of feel around in there for any identifying features of your, uh, host mind?”

  The young officer who had brought the terminal was staring at me. Host mind? he mouthed. I ignored him.

  “Uh, I can’t see too well. It’s dark for me,” Sovay/Moon said faintly. “I get a glimpse of a sidewalk sometimes. People dancing around on it. See-through people. Zootl”

  “Say again?”

  “I see a word on a sign. The word is “Zoot.’”

  I punched zoot into the keyword search program. A moment later a small window in the bottom left corner of the screen opened to inform me that there was a new dreamland in the Downs called The Zoot Mill.

  “Is that where you went? To The Zoot Mill?”

  “No. That’s where I am now. Across the street.”

  “Can you see anything else? Can you see yourself, what do you look like?”

  “I don’t know. I feel short. I try to feel my hair or my clothes but something’s blocking the input or something. I can’t get it.”

  It sounded like something that might be in character from what he’d told me about Dennie Moon. Method actors, I grumbled to myself.

  “I see my hand!” he cried suddenly. “There’s a picture on it, it’s smiling at mei It’s a woman! It—”

  “Hello? Still there, hello?”

  He gave a long, miserable sigh. “This guy is making me hang up.”

  The blinking bar at the top of the screen stopped blinking and gave me the address: a public voice-only phone right across the street from The Zoot Mill. The Age of Fast, Redundant Information. At least I knew he hadn’t been hallucinating or lying. “Can you get him to stay there?”

  “He’s hungry, I think. Something he wants a lot, maybe it’s food. He’s mad.”

  “Hold him until I get to you.”

  “I’ll try, but …”

  “Can you tell me anything else? Anything at all?” Inspiration hit me. “What did Derinie Moon look like in the play?”

  “Urn, youthful for his age. Black hair down to his shoulders, light green eyes. Stockyish build. Why?”

  I wrote down the description. “Just an idea. Listen, in a little while, a homely woman with lousy hair and old clothes is going to approach you. Be there.”

  “Wait!” he yelled suddenly. “Wait! I have something for you! Names! Fortray, Anwar, Easterman!”

  Fortray and Easterman meant nothing to me, but Anwar almost Yang a bell, albeit a very distant one, a bell that belonged to someone else. The terminal was logging the call so I didn’t worry about writing anything down. “Who are they?”

  “More of Sovay,” he said. “That’s all I know. More people they sold Sovay to.” He paused. “I don’t know why I know that. I have to go now. I can’t help it.”

  Resourceful guy, Sovay. I wondered if he’d planted the names in each mind, hoping at least one of them would call the Brain Police. It was too bad he couldn’t be restored, this was some major trick.

  “Try to stay where you are.” He didn’t answer. There was a click as the phone line went dead.

  The terminal printed out the three names he’d given, every one of them tagged U for Unknown. Either they didn’t have records or they were new aliases. I folded them up with the informant addresses and took off, leaving everything for the Sign-out officer to put away.

  Of course, he was gone when I got there.

  “Heya, heya!” called the man in front of the trip parlor (Sojourn For Truth—Not God But An Incredible Simulation!). “You gotta be paranoidl Can’t be too rich or too paranoid these daysl Heya, heya, hey-yal” hey He caught my arm as I started to go in. The cracked imitation-leather armor over his longjohns squealed with the movement. Stars twinkled in his teeth; he spat a few into the air between us. They must have been hell on his gums but neurosis peddlers are all goofy for special effects. “How about you, madam? You may think you’re paranoid, but are you paranoid enough?” His tacky moonstone eyes searched my face as more multicolored stars sailed out of the corner of his mouth. Two spitters in one day; the Age of Fast Information was oral as hell.

  “Had it for lunch,” I said raspily, doing what I hoped was a creditable imitation of the imp. “Let go.”

  “Heya, don’t pass me up. Simulated God can’t compare to the awareness you get from a nice dose of paranoia. It’s like coming up from underwater, you won’t believe how awake and alive you’ll feel—”

  “If you don’t let go of my arm, I’ll kill you.”

  “See? See?” He puffed out a few more stars. “You’re halfway there already. And the price is right. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you Crazy Al deals the best paranoia at the price, the best you can get without going totally insane!”

  I twisted away from him. When he reached for me again, I had one of the steel-pointed combs in my hand.

  “Heya, okay!” He jumped back, raising his arms and deflecting a few stars flying out of his mouth. “Numb your mind with truth and simulated God, that’s fine. But you’ll be looking for me when They all start plotting against you.”

  “When They all start plotting against me, I won’t need you.” I made a swipe at him and he jumped back again. If there’s anything I hate, it’s a cheap persecution complex masquerading as paranoia.

  The waiting room of Sojourn For Truth was empty and untended. No chairs, no waiting. Sojourn For Truth was the first of the informant addresses I’d been given and they tended to go in descending order of usefulness. It didn’t look familiar to me; apparently this was a byte parked with the imp’s program.

  I felt a little reluctant to bring her up but whatever was on the other side of the twinkly curtain that divided the waiting room from the parlor itself wasn’t something I was supposed to handle. Running a short breathing relaxation exercise, I planted a few false memories to give her some context and made the dive as I walked through the curtain.

  Some trip parlor. A lot of shabby futons spread on the floor under strings of paper lanterns. The lanterns are sup’ posed to be moodighting—how cheap’assed could you get? The even cheaper sound system was playing Brahms in raga-time on sitar, crackling hard on the high notes. Yah, not God but an incredible simulation. See God in a place like this, you know it’s hard times for the universe.

  There’s one paying fool, a young guy lying on a futon near a corner, giggling at the wall where this skinny hypehead in a white gown is making shadow pictures with his hands in front of a bare light tube. Guess there wasn’t too much call for simulated God these days. I wasn’t exactly looking to sanctify myself, either. The hypehead caught me staring and shrugged.

  “Holo’s broken,” he says. “They keep telling us the parts’ll be in any day now. Big deal. It’s the drug that counts, anyway. We got plenty of drug.”

  I jerk my chin at the wall. “Do God.”

  “Do this.” He gives me the International Symbol of Disdain, which doesn’t make the most interesting shadow on the wall. But it keeps the fool on the futon giggling.

  Well, nobody ever booked Coney Loe on the extreme cleverness charge. He was just your basic hypehead. They say he’d been some kind of catalyzer-imagist once, the kind creative artists hire to give them head-picture
s; supposed to give them a jump start, seeing all kinds of weird shit in their heads, make them more creative or something. Can’t make that stick, myself. I see the weirdest shit in the world in my head and I got no urge to paint Moby’s Dick or whatever it is. But maybe it’s different when Coney Loe does it.

  Or did it. Old Coney’s neurons gave out early on him and he dried up. Now he’s just a hypehead making like some hotwire and this is his latest two-step for groceries. It’s a comedown from hustling for persona mills, but considering the kind of places that would use someone like him, maybe not much.

  “So, how’s the simulated God here, Coney? Ever try it?”

  My calling him by name gives him pause, but just a very little one, and I know he doesn’t really remember me. Coney liked to forget certain things, keep the bank open for more important information. It was a Thing with him, information, like he was trying to know everything in the world or something. He could have gone pro, and every so often the Brain Police would come snuffling around, waving money in front of him, but they couldn’t turn him over. They didn’t seem to understand how it was with him, that he had to have information the way some people had to have sex, or memories, and the only way to buy from him was to pay in kind. But catch the Brain Police giving out information—sure, the night I remember getting crowned Pope. Firsthand.

  The Brain Police—the whole scene snaps back on me like bad karma. Shit, what have they done to me now? I can’t remember the interrogation but you never can, unless they find out something from you. I never could figure what gave them the right to take a memory, even a bad one like that, and you ask an eagle and all you get is a lot of lawyer ramadoola about confidentiality and your own protection. Like the Brain Police ever protected me from anything.

  Coney is staring at me. “You looking for truth?” he says. “Or just keeping a secret?”

  “Information,” I tell him automatically. “And maybe I’m keeping a secret.” Which I know I am, and it’ll come to me in a second … something to do with why the Brain Police jeflced my chain in the first place. It’s on the tip of my brain.

  Coney makes a two-handed bird and flaps the wings. “We got truth and God here. Hallucinogens flavored and unflavored, scented, unscented, in your mouth, up your arm, or whatever, lights, colors—” He changes the bird into a rabbit. “Pictures. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Information. Like I said.” I pull my fingers out of my mouth and wiggle them in front of the light tube, enchanting the paying fool.

  Coney bats my hand away. “Truth is cheap. Information costs. Can you afford information? Or only truth?”

  Now, I’ve got money and I’ve got a secret, and I know which one Coney really wants. Maybe I should have stopped off at a memory lane for a recall booster—

  And then it comes to me, just like that, as if someone put a tube in my ear and poured it in like clover honey. “I know something you don’t know.”

  It’s like telling a ramrod he’s got a limp plaything. Co-ney frowns and the rabbit becomes plain old fingers with’ out making any difference to the guy on the futon.

  “So?” Coney says, a little testy.

  “So I like memories. Anybody’s but mine. The real stuff. Somebody else’s. Like I could be somebody else. I like that a lot.”

  “I can understand that.” Coney keeps staring at me and does a dog one-handed, which sets his paying fool barking. “That doesn’t exactly make it as a secret, little queenie. Anyone could figure it out on short acquaintance. Unless you’re holding something other than your own personal disclosure, maybe you want to shake it to the memory lane across the street and stop bothering me when I’m simulating God. What do I care about your memory jones?”

  “You’d know where to get the really good stuff, Coney. You always know. Why, you’d even know where the freshest stuff would be. The freshest, never-been-seen stuff, even if no one else knew it was even there yet.” I take a breath, grinning because I know I got his attention now; I can tell by the way he’s making rabbit shadows like it’s his sacred mission in life. “Even if it wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  “I heard you,” he says, and his ruff is way up. Something happened and nobody told him about it; asses will be kicked. I feel sorry for the paying fool, whose ass happens to be handiest. My ass is safe for the moment, because I’ve got a secret.

  “I didn’t hear you,” I say. “Am I deaf?”

  He’s dying because I won’t come across. “I might know where you could get an order to go. Or I might have no idea.” He keeps doing the rabbit shadow. “Your turn.”

  “Somebody got sucked.” I put a ringer to my head and make like I’m thinking real hard. “Somebody that does something fancy. Yah, an actor. Just this morning, can you buy that?”

  He can. “Monkey shock,” he says. “Your turn.”

  “The Monkey Shop?”

  “I said, your turn.” He means it, no appeal. Either I come up with a name he can check or he’ll kick my ass after all for a liar. Information junkies have some interesting ways of kicking your ass, nothing you want to beg for.

  “Sovay. That’s the name, ask anybody.” Even I winced at that one. But hell you just can’t resist stinging an information junkie when you got the chance. They all act like knowing all that shit makes them more than the hypeheads they really are.

  “Shock. Shock. Monkey shock. Open your goddam ears.”

  “Do a monkey!” chortles the fool.

  “Shut up,” Coney tells him, but somehow he produces an apelike shadow.

  “So what’s a monkey shock?” I ask.

  “Thrills.”

  “A thrillseeker? Screw that. I already know how to get excited, thank you for nothing.”

  “This is different. Potluck. You go in and hope for the best. Lots of juice. Makes you dance like a monkey. But if you pay them enough—” Big pause. “Your turn.”

  Great. I had to go and shoot it all. I could have held back that it was this morning, I could have given an address first instead of a name—shit, an information junkie’ll finesse you every time. I’m trying to think fast; do I make something up and hope he doesn’t find out too soon it’s a lie, or go for the brass. Brass first, until I can come up with a convincing lie that could pass for misinformation later.

  “My turn? Like hell, you ain’t finished taking your turn, you’re changing dicks in the middle of my screw.”

  Goney won’t thaw. “Your turn.” He gives me a little smile, making a rooster on the wall. The skinny shit knows I’m tapped, or he thinks he knows it. I’m wondering what the odds are that I could beat it out of him and then I realize he’s told me enough that I can figure out the rest myself. He couldn’t help it; for an information junkie, the only thing as good as finding something out is passing it on.

  “Okay, here’s my turn. You say potluck? You say juice? You say pay enough? I say it sounds like maybe there’s a little extra in the juice if you pay enough and by the time your head stops jitterbugging, who’s to say whatever you got wasn’t yours to begin with.”

  Sometimes I really surprise myself. I may be a hypehead, but I ain’t no burnout, no sclerosis this year. Coney looks like he bit down on something sour.

  “Guess you know it all,” he says.

  I’m smirking away. “And if I don’t know, I know who knows.”

  “Yah?” He smirks back. “But do you know how you know all this?”

  “Just living right.” But I get a little edgy creep. I know about Sovay from the Brain Police, that’s nothing; every time someone gets sucked, they round up the usual suspects, no big shit and so fucking what. But I know that’s not what he means.

  “Like, how’d you get so genius, figuring stuff out like you got a sherlock circuit.” His smile is mean. “Don’t come back, little queenie. I don’t know who you are and you don’t, either.”

  “I’m everyone!“ Coney’s fool announces at the top of his lungs. Coney puts a polka-dotted sleeve over the tube and gives it a spin. While
the fool is going cross-eyed over this, he’s rummaging around in some stuff on the floor and finds a long white beard to put on. Icons die hard.

  He pauses to glare at me. “ “Don’t come back’ means you’re leaving now. Or can’t you figure that part out?”

  I give him a salute and start backing toward the exit.

  Coney leans over the fool. “Hi, I’m God. What’s on your mind?”

  The fool stares up at him; every neuron must be flapping and snapping like tiny pennants in a hurricane. “Why am I here?”

  “Because you’re stupid.”

  Fool nods very slowly. “Ah. I always thought it was more complicated than that.”

  It’s mean, but that’s the nature of truth.

  I shut her down as I went back through the curtain into the empty waiting room. The combined physical and mental movement gave me a moment of light vertigo while the memory of the immediate past settled around me.

  Memory from an imp feels more like a dream than a memory, and this felt like a dream I’d had before. I looked back at the curtain. Coney Loe; I didn’t know him, but the imp did, which meant he was a double-blind informant—only imps contacted him, and when the Sovay case was closed, I wouldn’t know him anymore, unless he somehow slipped into my long-term memory. That can happen after repeated contact with a double-blind.

  I put him out of my mind and considered Monkey Shock as I stepped outside. My pal the neurosis peddler was still hawking paranoia out front. He gave me a wide berth. I ignored him. Monkey Shock wouldn’t be anything more than crude convulsions induced by plain old electricity, with timed-release hallucinogens and a mental sorter delivering extra jolts randomly through the right hemisphere. Messy, but not illegal.

  It wouldn’t be hard to add sucker leftovers to the mental sorter. Memories would work best. The customer would get a thrill at each jolt. Afterward, electroshock amnesia covered all the traces. As the imp said, after your brain stopped jitterbugging, it would be impossible to tell which memories had been added and which were native. Maybe even the customer wouldn’t know for sure. Ingenious, and a lot less obvious than taking the stock to a pawnshop or a crib.