by Pat Cadigan
Bad news for me, though. Monkey Shock wasn’t one of those things I could engage in with even marginal safety. Getting myself hooked up in one of the sleazy memory lanes to see if there was anything of Sovay In the merchandise they were offering was safer than, say, getting myself hooked up to someone who’d been to the lane and bought some of it. In a lane, the operator usually lets the machine do most of the work and a machine doesn’t know the difference between a real memory junkie and a Brain Police officer with a memory junkie overlay.
But the worse news was Coney Loe’s suspicion. It could have been mere pique because some little unwashed hypehead he considered beneath him actually had some information he didn’t have. Or else I really had burned myself In a blazing display of deductive thinking. Blazing for the imp, anyway, or what she was supposed to be. The imp didn’t have all my information but she did have my intelligence, and maybe that wasn’t quite in character … although showing it off would be.
In any case, I was going to have to track down Monkey Shock before Coney Loe could get around to alerting them about me. J donsu’t know who you are and you don’t either.
Two onionheads shackled together on a long chain went by, both giving me dirty looks. I ignored them showily, turning away but being careful to keep their retreating figures in my peripheral vision so I’d see if they decided to turn on me and accuse me of flirting with one of them. Onionheads in a jealous frenzy could be fatal.
The neurosis peddler edged toward me, keeping out of reach. “Heya, I’m not trying to bother you or anything, but I got this spot staked, I got permits.”
I moved off without looking at him, bumping into a skinny blonde who seemed to be in the process of coming to while walking. She barely noticed me in her rediscovery of reality. Well, this reality.
“Heya, lover.” The woman had flies in her eyes. They looked real, preserved in the thickened irises, the pupils camouflaged in the little fly bodies. I was squatting in a parking space directly in front of The Zoot Mill, watching both the holo display on the sidewalk and the voice only phone across the street, in case Sovay/Moon decided to make a return appearance. Probably what I should have done in the first place, instead of burning myself with Coney Loe. The Zoot Mill holo was a little ragged, and nothing special—dancing girls, dancing boys, banquets, money tornadoes, and a lot of the usual signs and wonders—but it was tankless and vivid.
“Heya, lover Fly Eyes said again, moving a little closer.
“What,” snapped.
“You look like it’s been a while.” She grinned, showing me another fly design etched on a front tooth. Mouths, I thought. The world was full of mouths. “Well, the drought’s over because I got the man of your dreams.” She saw me looking at The Zoot Mill’s display where Hercules or someone like him was ceremoniously disrobing for three holo slave girls and one ilve woman who looked too fried to really appreciate it.
“Better than that,” she said. “Much better. Like he invented it. Unforgettable. It’ll be keeping you warm when you’re ninety.”
Looking at her, I had a flash. It was like looking out of two eyes belonging to two different people. For a moment the imp was aware in a vague way and we were cohabiting. This was the type of situation more suited for her than for me. I put her to sleep again. “Go away,” I said. “I don’t want some secondhand wet dream.”
“Wet dream? That doesn’t even begin to describe it. This is the mystical experience, change your life, change your religion. Ever been in a state of grace for three hours straight? If you had, you wouldn’t be squatting here biting your nails.”
I trapped both hands between my knees. “A wet dream’s a wet dream. If this guy really burns, I’d rather press his fiesh myself.”
“Not possible, he’s far away. But I remember it like it was an hour ago, had the whole memory specially enhanced and amplified. You’ll taste him, you’ll smell him—” She babbled on but she wasn’t fooling me. What she probably had was a second- or thirdhand memory of someone else’s fantasy. I guess I must have
FOOLS looked like I’d spent the last ten years locked in a lunchbox.
“Come on,” she said, moving a little closer. “It’s the best kind of mindfuck you’ll ever get. You don’t like it, I’ll give you a rebate minus the equipment fee.”
“Rebate this. Now skin off’—I pulled my left hand away from my mouth—“and leave me alone,”
“Frigid,” she jeered and stalked off.
I looked up at the meter. Five more minutes and then I’d have to move along. Meterfeeding had lately been outlawed in the Downs, one of the few regulations successfully enforced. A metertender had already come by once to take my picture so I was going to have to decide what to do—start asking around for Fortray, Anwar, or Easterman, go to the next informant address as Marya, or hang around here as either Marya or myself pretending to be Marya but keeping a low profile. Asking around for someone could get sticky. I could have given at least one of the names to Marya to ask Coney Loe about, but all things considered, it probably would have made him even more suspicious. He might have ended up stampeding the suckers into closing up shop and flushing Sovay altogether.
I kept thinking that Sovay/Moon couldn’t have gone far in the state he was in which would also possibly mean he hadn’t gone far in the first place, choosing the first phone he saw after coming out of Monkey Shock. Therefore, I could have been in Monkey Shock’s locale—for all I knew, it was a back room in The Zoot Mill, some thing I might have been able to find out if Marya hadn’t insisted on antagonizing Coney Loe.
The meter was just about expired when I saw her coming stiffly down the sidewalk toward me. For several seconds I froze until I remembered she couldn’t possibly recognize me. Certainly she wasn’t here hunting for me or any other kind of police. She looked tense and scared and a lot more emotional than she had back in her kitchen when she’d told me it wouldn’t make any difference to her personally if we caught the suckers who had done Sovay.
No points for nerve, I decided; it wasn’t nerve she was demonstrating by coming into the Downs. I had no idea what she thought she was doing, but even more to the point, how the hell could she know enough to do it in the first place?
Stupid fool, I said to myself. Anytime someone gets sucked, you look at the spouse first, no matter what; If the victim’s married to Baby Jesus, he’s number one on the list of suspects and you put the little tyke under surveillance—
But she was under surveillance. I was watching her, wasn’t I, she was right there in front of me. The regular police had probably tagged her all the way into my vicinity and then left her for me to deal with—they always know when a case officer is working an investigation, even if they don’t know exactly who it is. If Rowan knew anything, she’d take me right to the place I wanted to go, and if she didn’t, I could get rid of her somehow, chase her out under some pretext or another.
It was getting late and the streets were starting to fill with what they call local color, hues that look best under artificial light. Rowan hadn’t made any effort to blend in. She was still in her pouch suit, which was too new and too expensive for the area. Just as she drew even with The Zoot Mill, I saw the twinkle of a paranoid’s badge on her sleeve. All jumped up on a paranoid rush for a trip to the Downs?
The parking meter chimed and I stood up slowly, not wanting to alarm her with any sudden moves, but she wasn’t paying any attention to me. She only had eyes for the holo.
It was still Hercules or someone like him, wearing a strap and doing a vigorous ballet/square dance with the slave girls. Rowan was watching with an intentness that could have passed for carnal, which wouldn’t have been so unusual. Everyone handles a loss differently. But she was trying to get a good look at Hercules’ face, as though he might have been someone she knew.
That idea was unappetizing. How would she know some cheap holo hoochy-koocher and why would she be looking for him now? And why had she had to get paranoid to do it? She had no record of being l
icensed for paranoia or any other psychosis. And how paranoid was she, anyway?
I moved carefully around the other side of the holo, maneuvering through the small crowd that was gathering to watch Hercules. He was looping through his strip routine again and I found myself giving him a few points for talent. After all, whoever started out with the idea of being a cheap holo hoochy-koocher anyway? In his mind, maybe this had been Afternoon of a Faun, updated.
And what was it in Rowan’s mind?
Her attention remained focused on him, enabling me to get around on her left side, so she’d have to go right past me to get into The Zoot Mill, if that was where she was going.
Inadvertently, I brushed against a rooster-boy with a multicolored crest and feathered codpiece, and not much else except for a dusting of gold powder on his pasty skin. He turned to me with a wide, automatic grin.
“Hot enough for you?” The low, throaty come-on was already out of his mouth when the grin froze into something more painful than sexy. Rooster-boys weren’t supposed to be picky but apparently this one was. The rainbow crest rising from his hairline drooped. “Forget it. Not even if I was flatline.”
“And when have I ever demanded anything from you, dickie-bird?”
He blinked at me and I winced. Not crude enough for the situation or the character I was supposed to be. Trying too hard; either I had to let Marya come up or limit my vocabulary to Heya and Fuck off while I was driving.
And then Rowan turned around and looked directly at me. I froze again. In spite of the fact that she couldn’t have recognized my scratchy, gargly voice, the expression on her face said she wasn’t sure if she knew me or not. The paranoid’s badge on hersleeve glittered. General freefloating anxiety, I decided—that was her “paranoia.” Not the real thing with delusions of grandeur and hallucinations but the street stuff neurosis peddlers like my pal in front of Sojourn For Truth sold to the public: persecution complexes, anxiety, and such. I wouldn’t have thought anyone like Rowan would have had to buy anxiety to walk around in the Downs. She could have breathed it in with the air.
A pimp came up on her other side and tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped, twisting around, and backed into my rooster-boy, who immediately put both hands possessively on her shoulders. She jerked away from him and stepped into the holo display. Hercules’ arm went through her neck and I thought she was going to have hysterics. The pimp pulled her out of the circle of reception before she could break up the display. The two of them struggled together and then he said something I didn’t catch because the rooster-boy was bitching to nobody in particular that his customer had been stolen. People began giving ground around him, allowing me to move closer to Rowan, who was listening to the pimp with an expression that didn’t look the least paranoid anymore, or even anxious. She and the pimp made an odd couple, her in the expensive, trendy pouch suit and him in his traditional garish technicolor fuzz. He pointed down the street away from me and she made a move to leave. Blocking her with a fuzzy, electric-green arm, he tapped her paranoid’s badge. Rowan shook her head.
I maneuvered around behind them, planting more false memories for Marya, leaving her the knowledge of who Rowan was. If she thought Rowan was leading her to Monkey Shock, she’d be happy to follow.
Abruptly, Rowan slapped some currency into the pimp’s hand and stalked off in the direction he’d pointed. The pimp laughed at her retreating back and turned to the display again, watching Hercules fiddle with the ties on his codpiece. I let Rowan go half a block before sending Marya after her.
She looks like she knows where she’s going but not what she’s doing. People like her, they never know what they’re doing but they always know where they’re going.
I know she’s on her way to Monkey Shock; either she’s leading the Brain Police straight to them, or she’s going to ask for a rake-off of the profits on Sovay, grieving widow and all that shit. I’ve seen that before. Or, hell, she might even believe she can get him back. Plenty of them believe that; fuck if I know why. But then, astrologers are still in business, too, and there’s one guy I know of personally who probably believes he met God today and God told him he was here because he was stupid, which just goes to show you faith gets it over information every time Faith, or maybe truth, depending on your point of view, which is everything in this game.
So what the hell, maybe they’ll pay her off, or just suck her and call it a bonus. Either way, there’d be something for me when the dust settled.
She goes two blocks before she starts slowing down and looking at the buildings. There’s not much here, a pawnshop, a hardware/software dealer, and a crib passing as a read-only room. She almost passes the crib and then stops.
Now, I know this crib and if it’s Monkey Shock, I remember my papal coronation. Pimp’s probably going to run her all over the Downs, I realize; tells her to go one place and when she gets there, someone’ll tell her to go somewhere else, and so on, and so on, till she’s all turned around and lost. Then maybe they’ll send her to Monkey Shock, when they’re sure she’s too confused to know where she is. And when they’re sure she isn’t wagging a tail behind her.
Well, I’d just say the pimp sent me, too, to keep an eye on her. Why not.
I go right in after her and she doesn’t even know it. Place is just a big ratmaze inside, cubicles and low walls, so I can keep track of her from a distance. They’re doing a little business in there anyway, not much, but a few other hypeheads are wandering the aisles. The whole idea is, you see something in a cubicle you like, you step in and have some.
Rowan’s all at sea in here. I cruise the other side of the room, just in case there’s anything interesting running, but it’s like any other crib—one sorry soul after another, waiting to sell you their best shot, and the hardware piled up off to one side. One old gock with peppermint eyes (where do they come up with this stuff?) and foil curls is whispering “Cubs? Cubs? You like ’em young? It’s no crime to just think about it, you know,” and next to him is a job in a leather hood with the eyes zipped shut, chanting “Fetish, fetish, fetish,” like I’m supposed to believe I can really get one that’ll stick past the first time I go to sleep. And I’m watching Rowan and wondering what she’s making of all this; I’m sure she’s never been in a crib before.
And I don’t know what gets into me all of a sudden, but I want to get over to her and tell her to get out. She can think about anything she wants with anybody she wants, but a place like this is below anyone still capable of raising a sine wave without help. Hell, even the hardware has to be scuzzy, with all that kind of thinking running through it. I bet if I go over and crack open the system next to the gock with the peppermint eyes, it’ll be nothing but slime inside instead of chips and plates. Marya Anderik, crusader for social reform, sure. For all I know, I bought from the old gock before he ran thin enough to move in here.
Then Rowan stops in front of a cubicle and Hercules pops up, live, Hercules the hoochy-koocher in cheap jumpjohns. And what happens next is so kinky, even I don’t believe it.
They slam together and start kissing.
Automatically, I duck, waiting for alarms to go off and vice squads to drop down from the ceiling. The regular police love to raid a meat market with people really doing things instead of just thinking about them. But then Rowan and Hercules sink down before anyone else gets a look at what they’re doing. I give them five seconds and then hurry over, going as fast as I can because I have to run up and down two aisles going almost the width of the room.
When I get to them, I expect to see live porno, but it’s weirder than that—they’re already lying side by side on the cots, and they’re hooked into the hardware, her eyes in a tank on one side and his in a tank on the other, just like everything is normal.
What’s wrong with this picture is there’s a third person, a funny-looking haunt in ratatat worse than mine, lying on the floor between them, and he’s hooked in, too, through an illegal auxiliary connection. His eyes are drifting around in
a bowl next to his head and for some reason, I think of that old joke—the party got so wild, I passed out and woke up as the guy next to me. The crib’s not licensed for anything other than one-on-one. No crib is. I can’t figure why they’re risking it; anyone in here can be a Brain Police plant and if they’re caught, it’s instant raid. But people who mouthkiss’ll try anything. Mouths, yuck.
The guy on the floor suddenly reaches up and starts to disconnect, and the last thing I see before I do a fast fade is he’s got tattooed hands. Christ, the silly stuff you notice.
I had sixty seconds, give or take, to decide whether I should confront them or skin off and maintain surveillance at a distance. The guy on the floor, now fumbling like a novice with the connections to his optic nerves, was obviously the man who called me at the station—the tattoo on his right hand fit the description he gave. If his memory wasn’t too spotty, he would recognize me as the person who was supposed to meet him at the phone across from The Zoot Mill. I wasn’t so sure making contact now would be the optimum thing to do.
He had his connections out and he was reaching for his eyes. I ducked into the next cubicle, and crouched next to the wall. The occupants didn’t care—they were both hooked up to a system, sharing whatever it was people shared In cribs. Next door, I could hear Sovay/Moon moving around, helping Rowan and Hercules disconnect.
“Oh, thank you” Rowan whispered politely, as though he’d just passed her the edible polyester at a dinner party. There were a few sounds of hurried kisses and then I heard Hercules whisper, “Rowan and I will go out together Give us ten minutes to get past my pimp—we don’t want him cutting himself in. Then meet us at—”
I couldn’t get it because Sovay/Moon chose that moment to grunt unhappily. He started to make some kind of complaint but the other two shushed him. A moment later they hurried past the cubicle I was crouching in, leaving Sovay/Moon alone. I gave it five seconds and then crawled out of the cubicle and into the other.