Cyberpunk

by Victoria Blake

  scary than the men. If one of them was to take Bel and go, out into the

  drenching purple night, what could he do?

  Meanwhile, the desk clerk who was also the waitress kept passing to and

  fro. She was breaking the rules, but she seemed to have some kind of special

  license. Every time she passed she would find a way to flirt: leaning over a

  208

  BLUE CLAY BLUES

  nearby table to show her neat butt, reaching up to a shelf to give him the taut curve of her breast and waist. Every small town has to have its bad girl. The

  younger men hooted and flicked her behind. The other women, young and

  old, pretended not to notice.

  The party broke up at last. Johnny lay staring at the gray ceiling of room 5,

  and at the inevitable cam—eye circled with its thoughtful message for your

  protection. The rain had stopped. The main street outside was noisy with the home-going populace. Must’ve been about every able-bodied soul in town.

  He’d brought Bella out before, but never so far and nothing had ever gone

  wrong. He considered how important it was for him to believe that it was

  safe. No danger, no harm, there are decent people everywhere. The upholding

  of some kind of liberal ideal was apparently worth more to him than his

  child’s life and safety.

  They could take Bella away from me.

  Walking into that bar with her had been like shooting his cuff to display an

  antique gold Rolex. Madness! He could try to tell them Bel was a perfectly

  ordinary little girl, produced by traditional methods and complete with

  organically grown blemishes (she had a crowded mouth, and a tendency to

  stand over on her inherited weak ankles). You wouldn’t get people out here

  to believe it, when they saw her next to their own scrawny, undersized,

  scabby-faced kids. To believe Bella was ordinary they’d have to accept that

  Johnny wasn’t weirdly privileged, Johnny was normal . . . They’d have to see how far they’d fallen.

  You wouldn’t want to wish that on them.

  Two hundred miles from NYC. There was no protection, no law, no appeal.

  From the moment that tow truck appeared he had been in trouble. He would

  be criminally crazy not to cut his losses and get out—even if he were alone. But he hated to give up. He was on the track of a story, and he knew he was in the right place. If God didn’t know why the fuck he was here; if God was convinced

  by the spurious dazzle of irradiated gemstones— somebody must know better.

  That somebody would come to Johnny. He didn’t have to do anything but wait.

  He linked his hands behind his head, and thought about sex. He recalled

  Bella’s experiment in the school hall. She was her father’s child all right.

  209

  GWYNETH JONES

  She’d made that vital connection so naturally—doubt and danger and a

  mellow hint of violence . . . whoo, up we go. It wasn’t likely that Johnny was

  heading for a real amorous adventure. Things weren’t so different in that

  area, inside the city or out. But the sex stuff could come in useful, just because it was in short supply. It was a greed that could cover for anything.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  The desk clerk shut the door and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Hi, Johnny.”

  She seemed older than he was, but she was probably a teenager. She had

  stringy dark blonde hair cut in a bob. Blue eyes, a wiry unkempt body in a faded overall, an out-of-doors suntan that was ruining her skin. She smiled with her

  eyes and touched his pant leg, as if she were testing if it was still damp.

  She glanced upward. “It’s okay, Donny’s minding the store. He never

  checks the screens, and this one don’t work anyhow. I put you in here on

  purpose.”

  A heavy, warning wink told him he wasn’t meant to be reassured. Donny,

  aka Gustave, was undoubtedly glued to the most promising peephole in town.

  “Well, stranger, can we do business?” She took her hand from his leg and

  touched herself, both palms smoothing the slick worn fabric over her breasts.

  “I don’t want money. I want a ride. I don’t belong to anyone, you’ve no need

  to worry.”

  She was in a big hurry, but that was reasonable enough. Johnny would be

  gone tomorrow.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cambridge.”

  “That’s the name of a city.”

  “I know. My momma liked the sound. You ever been there? The English

  one? I like to think it’s the original I’m called for.”

  “No, I can’t say I have.” Johnny watched her, not moving a muscle. “I can’t

  get you into the city, you know that. I suspect you’re an agent provocateur,

  ma’am.”

  “Hey, no way. I’m not going to get you into trouble. I just want a ride down

  the road, a change of scene. And I can get you out of the trouble you happen

  to be in.”

  210

  BLUE CLAY BLUES

  She winked her steamroller wink again. “Get rid of those ants in your pants,

  city boy?” She squeezed his thigh, and giggled. Her eyes, which the camera

  couldn’t see, were deadly serious.

  “If a girl wants to get on, she has to be ready to act fast. That’s the shape of things to come, don’t you think? You can’t act like the old technology, sit there waiting for the current. You gotta be able to change yourself, to fit what’s coming at you.”

  Johnny was wrestling with his conscience. This could so easily be a trap.

  He would accept the clerk’s offer (what city slicker would refuse a loose

  woman?). The vigilantes would burst in. There would be some kind of

  ersatz legal procedure, God probably presiding. The boondocks were hot on

  sexual restraint. Notwithstanding her behavior downstairs it would be

  Johnny’s fault. The stranger caught in the act of fornication—maybe

  statutory rape—would be declared unfit to be in charge of a minor. All he

  knew about the “blue clay” could be beaten out of him on the side. He

  could see how tempting it looked. They’d have Bella and the diamonds.

  Johnny would be dumped naked out on the road—dead or alive. Dead, for

  preference, rather than explain himself to Izzy. He should not even dream

  of taking the risk.

  On the other hand, all his instincts promised that the clerk was not laying

  that kind of trap.

  “I don’t know if you have the right idea about me. I take risks, that’s my job.

  But not for trivial reasons.”

  “I felt that. I can read people . . . pretty well.” She smiled, ruefully. “This may sound crazy, but I’ve always thought I could have been an eejay. If

  someone like me could have the chance.”

  “I wish that everyone could have the chance,” said Johnny.

  She nodded, head bent.

  “Mr. Micane’s got you all wrong, in my opinion. This blue clay that you’re

  looking for, it doesn’t represent any kind of material gain. The diamonds

  don’t mean anything . . . to you. What you really want is, like, a sense of living meaning in your life. Something rare and magic that could unite everyone.”

  “It’s true, living with meaning is a dream of mine,” he agreed—with the accent on the two special words.

  “I’ve had that dream too.”

  211

  GWYNETH JONES

  She gave him a long and tender look. It
thrilled Johnny to the core. This

  was a real contact. He wondered how much she could be persuaded to tell.

  Cambridge tossed back her hair. “Okay, mister eejay. After the highfaluting

  come-on, do we have a deal?”

  He glanced around the room, swiftly up and away at the “defective” camera.

  “Um—can we go somewhere?”

  “You want me to take you home?” She walked to the door. Leaned there, in

  a pose from some ancient movie. “I come off shift in an hour. There’s a dark

  blue Nissan in the parking lot. I’ll meet you beside it.” She grinned up at the eye in the ceiling. “I’ll take you where there’s no protection. Can you do it

  without an audience, eejay? Ever tried?”

  Johnny put his gear together. He was rapturously busy for a few minutes,

  during which Bella vanished as she had by the roadside. Then he remembered

  her. He stared at the sleeping baby, chewing his lower lip.

  Next to the Japanese antique there was an ancient pickup, the color of its

  paint indeterminate in the yellow light of the oil lamps that guarded the

  hotel’s rear. Cambridge looked out of the dark cab. She was silently amazed.

  “I couldn’t leave her. She’d wake and be scared.”

  She looked him over. “Is that a gun in your pocket?”

  “No, it’s a spare diaper.”

  The clerk shook her head, pushed open the other door for him. He

  clambered, arranging Bel’s warm bulk in the baby carrier on his knees. They

  were jolting away, lightless, through the dark town, before she managed to

  come up with a comment.

  “In my world, men don’t bring up kids. They just own them.” She chuckled.

  “Hey, what happens when we get to our love nest? Does she like to watch, or

  have you trained her to take part?”

  Mental tape: a long drive. The darkness was haunted by the ghosts of well-

  kept lawns and scampering retriever dogs, boys on bicycles, flung newspapers

  and mailboxes on sticks. It was a world that Johnny had never known—

  inaccessible now except on records as hard to decipher as incunabula to an eye

  reared on print. How did people make out that stuff? Depthless, even colorless.

  Johnny imagined skills lost to him forever, the genes for watching b&w TV

  switched off in his decadent blood. He hugged Bella in her frame sling. The feel of her was so immensely reassuring, he thought all secret agents should have a

  212

  BLUE CLAY BLUES

  baby to carry. When you can’t trust anyone, and it’s against the rules for you to be sure what’s going on—you hug your baby, and she keeps you sane.

  They parked among trees.

  “What the fuck was all that nonsense about jewelry, anyway?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Best I could do. I didn’t expect to be picked up like that.

  Had to send out some kind of signal. I could see I wasn’t going to get much

  chance to nosey around asking questions.”

  “You’re right. And you’re lucky. Micane’s not stupid, you know. He’s just

  short of information. Like all of us out here. Okay, come on. You take some

  tape of the crown jewels, and hurry the record back to your magic dome.”

  “Please. I don’t live in a ‘dome.’ I live in an overgrown shopping mall. With

  dirt in the corners, and plenty of problems.”

  Cambridge smiled, humoring him. “Sure you do.”

  She opened a door, steps led down. When he realized they were going

  underground, he understood the dazzling truth. She wasn’t leading him to a

  bargaining rendezvous with the cadre. She had brought him straight to the

  goods. The room was shadowy, echoing, with a low and bowing ceiling and a

  strange incline. The walls, replying to Cambridge’s pencil light, gleamed

  phosphorescent pale.

  “What is this place?”

  “It was a swimming pool,” she said. “Olympic pool. It’s been drained and

  boarded over for years. No water. Rest of the building’s derelict.”

  She’d changed into pants, jacket, and a sweater. The rain had made the

  night cool. Her clothes were as squalid, strange-colored, and ill-fitting as the things the men wore, but not filthy. She pulled a clunky black plastic remote

  out of her waistband and keyed lights. Must be a generator on site.

  Johnny stared. The glass and ceramic labyrinth: the vats. It was the real

  thing, a coralin plant in full production. He’d spent time in legal protein-chip production, in his apprenticeship—if only in virtuality. It wouldn’t have

  helped. The processing here was too makeshift to be precisely recognizable.

  But he’d also been tutored, unofficially, by people who knew the wild side.

  He took the time to settle Bella on his shoulders. She had woken up in the

  pickup, but only to ask a few drowsy questions. What’s her name . . . What’s

  this car’s name. She was asleep again (and the pickup was called Laetitia).

  He was proud of her. She was really the perfect child.

  213

  GWYNETH JONES

  “I can make tape?”

  Cambridge nodded. “That’s the deal, eejay. We’ll get you away from

  Micane. You tell the folks back home what we have here.”

  He mugged amazement, let her know how thrilled he was to find this spore

  of civilization outside the citadel: wondering all the while where the rest of

  the group was, where they’d gotten the starter, all sorts of questions to which he ought to get answers. But he already knew that Cambridge was going to

  tell him everything. He was stunned by her group’s trust, embarrassed by the

  power of his job’s reputation.

  It had been obvious before the end of the twentieth century that the future

  of data-processing and telecoms was in photochemistry. Chlorophyll in green

  plants converts light—energy into excited molecules without thinking twice

  about it. The “living chip” was inevitable: compact and fast. They called the

  magic stuff of the semi-living processors “blue clay” because the original

  protein goop was blue-green in color. Embedded in a liquid crystalline

  membrane, blue clay became a single surface of endlessly complex

  interconnections. Under massive magnification it looked like a coral: hence

  the other name, coralin. Clay? Because you can make it do anything.

  So much for the technology. But then the networks, silicon and gallium-

  arsenide based, had crashed in the explosion of virus infection that ended the

  century. Coralin wasn’t greatly superior at that point, but it was immune to

  the plagues. In a deteriorating political situation—a foundering economy,

  wave upon wave of environmental disasters—the blue clay had become

  political dynamite. It meant power.

  Diamonds? It was a stupid cover, but good enough for the spur of the

  moment. Out here, a coralin plant was worth more than a truckload of gems.

  If the masses who lived outside the citadels could build themselves some

  modern data processing they could hook up into the city networks. They’d be

  up and running again, and the elite who lived indoors would be running

  scared. The amazing thing was that more of the masses didn’t try. They

  accepted, with chilling calm, that a certain way of life was over. They had

  their own world with its own rules, and the cities were on another planet.

  Johnny made tape, describing how it really was a coralin plant, a
nd the journey he’d made to find it. He walked the aisles, the 360 cam on his headset taking in every angle. Cambridge stayed off camera. She didn’t want to wave to the public.

  214

  BLUE CLAY BLUES

  He finished. They faced each other: two nodes of a diffuse molecular

  machine, linked by the lock and key action of certain key phrases hoicked

  out of the romance of molecular technology. The living meaning, not like the old technology, change yourself to fit what’s coming at you. Johnny was uneasy. He had not deceived her, not actively. But she was deceived, and it was making

  him uncomfortable.

  “You’re a union activist, aren’t you,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he laughed nervously. “A cellar unionist.”

  She had been tough and worldly wise to his soft city-boy, a rough diamond.

  Down at the deep end, in the pallid glow of the drained pool, the balance

  between them was reversed.

  “You came out here to find us. What can I say? I feel . . . found. Like a toy

  left out in the rain, that thought the kids would never come back to look for

  her. I feel rescued.”

  Johnny chewed his lip. Bella wriggled and muttered. One of her knees

  started butting him in the ribs. She couldn’t get comfortable and she was

  going to wake. She weighed a ton.

  “D’you ever hear about the phylloxera beetle?” he said. “It’s a similar story.

  It’s a kind of bug, it spreads like a virus. Once upon a time, all the good wine came from France. They had the vines. The quality, wonderful ancient-lineaged plants. Then someone accidentally shipped in some phylloxera

  beetles, and the whole of French viticulture was devastated. They had to rip

  the lot out and start again . . . with vines from North America, where the bug

  was endemic and the native vines had natural resistance. In a generation

  nobody could tell the difference. The wine-drinking public forgot it had ever

  happened.”

  “Phylloxera-proof telephones,” said Cambridge. “Knowing what’s

  happening in the next state. Bank credit. No more of that fucking censored

  cable TV. God. I can’t believe it.”

  Johnny registered something moving behind him. The lights were off at the

  shallow end, but the 360 showed Gustave coming down the steps. Johnny

  controlled himself with an enormous effort. Among these people you must

  not show fear.

  “Micane’s guys are here,” he told her softly. Cambridge didn’t make a fuss.