Cyberpunk

by Victoria Blake

  “We were hoping you could talk to your CEO on our behalf.”

  “Our? Wait a fraction. You want me to become the blackmailer?”

  “He’ll listen to you.”

  “No he won’t—” The denial died in my throat. Actually, theory-brain

  pointed out, he would. Because you can spin a thousand variations on what will happen if the data spills into the medianet.

  It’s all about control, I had told Prescott Four, and I had never had it. I had been set up from the beginning.

  On the long ride back to ICE, I pulled up the image of Sophie and I (fuzzy)

  and the octopi (not as) and left it there in my field of vision. Eventually, she filled the void in my head.

  “Hello, Max.”

  “Hello, Sophie.” I had been thinking, going back over the course of events

  during this crisis, trying to find a hole in theory-brain’s assessment. I hadn’t had any luck. “I’d like you to do something for me.”

  “What is it?”

  “The last package. The one being delivered in the ICErack. Can you expedite

  it to Prescott Four’s office? Can it get there before I do?”

  “Yes, Max, I can do that.”

  “I thought you might.”

  She was quiet for a fraction. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m just tired. This whole thing is—I’ll . . . I’ll be glad when it is done.”

  “Yes, Max, I will be too.”

  I felt the ’tubebus shift. Apogee. Back down to the surface now. Time to

  finish this. “Sophie,” I said, and the words were hard to say, but I had to get them out. “Please stop watching me. It’s an invasion of my bubble.”

  “I understand, Max. I’m sorry.”

  “I am too, Sophie.” I wiped in the image from my iView. “Good-bye, Sophie.”

  “Good-bye, Max.”

  255

  MARK TEPPO

  It had been the eyes. Hammurabi’s and Sophie’s. Too similar to be a

  coincidence. And to be sure, I had queried a reverse lookup to B-R HumResD,

  which came back null. They didn’t have a Visual Monitor tagged with “Sophie.”

  I was killnining all the files on my office terminal when the door opened and

  Yullg squeezed his gigantic bulk into my tiny three square. He glared at me

  for a moment, and eventually realized there wasn’t going to be enough room

  for him, me, and Prescott Four. He popped his jaw menacingly and stepped

  back, allowing the InterCore CEO to enter.

  I tapped the button on my desk that engaged the security screens.

  “Grimester signed for the package,” he said. “The one you had routed to

  my office.”

  “Did he open it?” I asked.

  “Of course he did.”

  I didn’t say anything. Nor did Prescott Four, and we stared at each other for

  a few fractions before he shrugged and looked away. “Well, I was due for

  another XA anyway. He was starting to get a little annoying with that . . .”

  He waved his hand at his face. “That nasally thing he did.”

  I kept wiping my files.

  He giggled, and then caught himself. “You should have seen it,” he sighed.

  “I did.” I tapped my desk’s v-mon to life and showed him the feed. Grimester

  opening the large ICErack and discovering the desiccated corpse inside, and

  his ensuing panic that resulted in a minor explosion of bone and dust and

  other noisome particulates that come off mummified bodies.

  “How did it make you feel?” he asked. “Angry?”

  “At who?” I replied.

  “Me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I . . . ” he paused, reluctant to put it into words.

  “The Sandeesh family has tagged me as the executor of their . . . vengeance,

  I suppose,” I said. “I’m supposed to convince you that the best thing to do is

  to provide restitution for what you stole from them. In return for which,

  they’ll vanish. They have shipped you every piece of physical evidence they

  ever had. What you do with it is your business.”

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  “What about you, Max?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll EOE when we’re done here. That’ll make things easier—”

  “Max,” he interrupted. “What am I supposed to give you?”

  He seemed just as confused as I was about my role. What did I want? I

  certainly couldn’t keep working here, not with the knowledge that I had. I

  had had to stop theory-brain from listing the ways in which I could be EOLed

  in industrial accidents.

  I sat back in my chair. It was a hard and uncomfortable surface, one I had

  been molding my body to for a long time. Too long, in fact, but what else

  could I have done? Entropy was easy.

  “I want to be needed, I think.” I glanced around my tiny—and despairingly

  empty—office. “ICE is an efficient machine. Like everything else. No one

  needs a theorist to think ‘what if?’ any more.”

  He gave me a fraction to add to that, and when I didn’t, he nodded. “I’ll have

  FinD retro-state you to Director, and then stamp you out with a full 590(t).”

  Theory-brain made a suggestion, and I concurred. I raised an eyebrow to

  Prescott Four, and he held up his hands. “Plus vestments.”

  “I think that’ll help me find a way to be useful somewhere else, sir.”

  He started to offer his hand, and then withdrew it, realizing he didn’t really

  want to shake this deal.

  Nor did I. We’d let the rest of the machine take care of it.

  He left without another word, and I caught sight of a dark cloud of

  disappointment on Yullg’s face as he was called away by Prescott Four.

  And just like that, it was over.

  I hadn’t had to tell Prescott Four that I knew iReset could do a sex change;

  that I knew whose DNA tags would come up for the mummified body that

  had exploded all over his XA’s office; and I didn’t have to tell him that I knew his birth mother had called him “Giselle.”

  Nor did I tell him that Hammurabi and Sophie were his grandchildren.

  That was their secret to keep.

  Regardless of what her tattoo said.

  When I got home, there was a package waiting. Inside was a tiny hypercube

  key and an Instaprint of a woman’s body. A close-up of her naked torso,

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  MARK TEPPO

  draped with octopi tentacles. Scrawled on her belly, above her tattoo, was

  the phrase “I miss you.”

  The hypercube key was coded for domicile access. She had given me root

  privileges.

  It was, in the end, all I really wanted.

  258

  SOLDIER, SAILOR

  By Lewis Shiner

  Stepping out of the airlock behind Reese, Kane was amazed by the weight &

  wetness of the air. He could make out the odors of cut grass, honeysuckle & ivy.

  Martian night was falling outside the dome & he sensed clouds forming above him.

  Rain on Mars. Evenly spaced houses surrounded him, covered with ivy & separated by rows of elephant ears & ferns. The intricacy of the ecological planning startled him; a bee floated over his head & somewhere a mockingbird whistled.

  The sight of the colonists sitting on their porches in the sunset filled him

  with a mixture of nostalgia & surrealist horror. They smiled & nodded to Kane as if it had been days instead of years since they’d seen a stranger, as if the space program still existed & Reese was once more in uniform.


  Reading Ouspensky, he had found the first clue to the strange visions that

  spun around the lip of his consciousness. “Every separate human life is a

  moment in the life of some great being which lives in us.” But when he tried for a more concrete image than ships & shadowy figures rising from the

  ground, it melted away. From Campbell Kane learned of the Pattern of the

  Hero, the inexorable circle, the path of exile & return. For an instant the memories—if that was what they were—clarified. Kane saw that he must

  take it all personally. Then it was gone again.

  Eventually Curtis asked how things were on Earth & Reese framed a careful

  reply. Kane paid little attention to the measured, cautious description of the

  riots, the famines, the plagues. Instead he examined Curtis, the governor of

  the colony, with care. The man was soft, pallid, mannered in his speech.

  Kane asked simple questions—limits to the population, energy sources,

  chains of command. He found Curtis’s answers evasive, dismissive. Kane felt

  the vast gulf between himself & the Earth as an ache inside him.

  • • •

  LEWIS SHINER

  Their first morning on Mars, Reese had taken him to the ruins of the native

  city. Kane was fascinated by the enigma of the Martian holocaust—the

  artifacts of intelligence assimilated into the processes of nature.

  “Why no bodies?” Kane asked, scuffing through the rings of ash, sand &

  boiled rock. “They should have mummified when the water went.”

  Reese shrugged, the motion barely discernible through his bulky suit.

  Kane wandered off, trying to picture the city before the disaster. Some of

  the walls were almost intact, blistered & pitted, but recognizable, while on all sides there was only rubble. The stone, obviously artificial, was

  indistinguishable from the surrounding rocks. It formed an architecture of

  intersecting lines, with the Druidic power of Stonehenge.

  At dinner he sat across from Curtis’s wife, Molly. She was tall, dark, full

  breasted, with a quality of listless abstraction that Kane found compelling.

  He desired her in a dark, impersonal way that was nonetheless intense. As for

  Curtis, Kane found him increasingly officious, dangerously authoritative. He

  identified Curtis with his uncle; at the thought, the taste of his food turned

  sour. His mood turned chaotic & violent & he held his fists under the table until the worst of it passed.

  “The panel,” his uncle said, “is circular, about 35 cm in diameter, studded at

  irregular but frequent intervals with PROMs.” The fluorescent light was

  harsh & Kane’s attention wandered toward the smog & riot-torn streets

  outside the window. “At least three of these chips are mutants, and are

  responsible for the power output curves on this chart.”

  Kane glanced at the chart & away again, despising his uncle, the broad

  waxed desk, his own poverty & failure. His uncle’s life depended on his

  staying in business; if he failed, his employees would tear him to pieces.

  “We have to get those chips into the lab,” his uncle said, “or we’ll never

  know why they perform the way they do.”

  “You say this panel is dangerous.”

  “In the hands of the colonists, yes. It’s been ten years since the space

  program was terminated. They undoubtedly need resources from Earth, if

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  they’re even alive at all. How do they feel about Earth after we cut them off?

  Can we even hope to understand them? A ship powered by that panel is a

  weapon pointed at the Earth.”

  The walls of the office were lined with renderings of yet more offices. Kane

  sat & allowed himself to be manipulated. Something had gone out of him

  during his years of student exile. He no longer had the will to resist.

  On their second trip to the ruins, Reese took Kane into the central

  underground complex. The entrance was small, a vivid black hole in the

  orange glow of the desert. Kane lowered himself after Reese & found himself on a steeply descending ramp. As his eyes adjusted to their flashlights he

  made out the circular pit to his left. It seemed to have no bottom. The ramp

  curved around it & he followed, no more than a spectator, just as he had

  been in grade school, watching on TV as Reese planted the US flag on these

  same ruins & turned to wave to the cameras.

  Now Reese turned off the ramp & moved between tilted slabs of rock to an

  inner chamber. Reese’s hand moved & a door swung open from the wall.

  Kane followed him inside. The door closed behind them & Kane heard the

  unmistakable hiss of pressurized air. Inside his helmet a light changed from

  red to green. Reese took off his helmet & opened an inner door. Light flowed from the walls themselves & Kane turned off his flash.

  The walls were made of the same artificial stone as the ruins above,

  lacking all ornament. Walking into the room, he loosened his helmet & set

  it on the floor. The chill air stung his cheeks & made him wince. Here there was finally decoration, a low relief that reminded Kane of a printed circuit

  board. It ran from floor to ceiling with circular protrusions at key points,

  but no visible dials or meters. He understood the chauvinism of such an

  expectation. At the far end of the room, where Reese stood, the outlines of

  a door were etched into solid rock. No handle or indentation marred its

  surface. Kane pressed his hand to it. He sensed its importance, connected

  it instinctively to the disappearance of the Martians, but could not guess its

  function. It did not respond to his touch. He turned to look at Reese.

  “What does it mean?”

  Reese put his helmet back on & started for the door.

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  LEWIS SHINER

  • • •

  Like a fragment of melody on a tape loop: clear, high voices in a minor key,

  without a message, offering only coloration, a distortion in his ability to see the world. Or like a flickering at the edges of his vision that seemed to be the curves & angles of fourth-dimensional space. Behind it a sense of alien

  personality, lurking. The ghosts of the Martian builders?

  Kane wandered barefoot through the city under the dome. It was a quiet

  suburb painted by Magritte, too uniform, too clearly defined, too obviously

  existing in a vacuum. The grass under his feet was a rich green, round-bladed

  & moist. The houses were like those in the poverty-level neighborhoods

  where Kane had grown up, after his father died—vinyl siding, short porches,

  bushes & trees growing unhindered against the walls.

  At the edge of the dome he watched distorted images of dust storms blow

  past the double wall of yellowing plastic. High C0 levels & the peak heat of 2

  afternoon made him drowsy & short of breath. Reese & Curtis would be at the ruins all day; he had time for an hour or two of sleep.

  Retracing his steps, he saw Curtis’s wife, Molly, on the porch of their

  bungalow.

  A chill of prescience went through him. The Presence in his mind sang to

  him as he climbed the single step & stood in front of her. She was solid,

  indifferent, languidly sensual. Kane’s hands were clenched again.

  “Sit down,” she said, making it a polite question. Kane sat facing her. He

  searched her face for information, admiring its clean, symmetrical weight.<
br />
  They had reached the neutrality of afternoon. He could not avoid looking at

  her breasts, at the wide brown nipples visible through her T-shirt.

  “You’d like a drink,” she said, standing. Kane heard the power of command

  she chose not to use. He felt her matriarchal strength, her link with the rich, darkly scented vegetation that surrounded them. He followed her into the

  gloom of a curtained kitchen, hearing birds cry outside in an eternal,

  abstracted spring. He stopped Molly at the refrigerator with a light touch on

  the arm. As she turned to him her eyes lost their focus & became distant,

  passive. His hands went to her breasts, thumbs touching her nipples as she

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  gripped his elbows. She led him into her bedroom, a dim, fragrant place more

  personal, more private than her body. Standing across the bed from him she

  pulled her clothes off as he watched. The aroma of her body drifted to him,

  heavy, sweet, blatantly sexual. Kane shut his eyes, unwilling for a moment to

  continue with it: his internal struggles, his helplessness before his own sexual urgings, the climax inevitably empty compared to the ritual preceding it. As

  their bodies merged, Molly astride him, her hands on his wrists, Kane felt the

  violence rise within him. With effort he delayed his ejaculation until Molly

  had satisfied herself; by that time he had become detached from his own

  passion. He spasmed quickly & they lay together in the heat of the drowning afternoon.

  Kane had been amazed by Reese’s easy acceptance of his uncle’s offer. Clearly

  Reese had ulterior motives; Kane had no desire to learn them. From this

  understanding came a kind of mutual respect, or at least silence. Reese did

  not ask Kane to justify his part in the scenario, a scenario that seemed to

  point to both their deaths.

  Reese claimed to have translated the Martian engravings during the ten

  years he’d spent on Earth, an involuntary furlough caused by the failure of

  the space program. Kane eventually began to believe the translations were

  genuine, but knew Reese was holding something back.

  Reese assembled the entire population of the colony in their conference room.

  Kane sat on the back row with a piece of string, idly weaving cat’s cradles.

  “Today,” Reese said, “I took the preliminary dictionary to the ruins, with