Hub
Issue 26
29th September 2007
Editors: Lee Harris, Alasdair Stuart and Trudi Topham.
Published by The Right Hand.
Sponsored by Orbit.
Issue 26 Contents
Fiction: The Music Company by Eugie Foster
Review: Roger Corman Collection
Buy Us A Beer
On Saturday 13th October, Hub plays host to an Open Night for the British Fantasy Society at York Brewery (in York). Members and non-members all welcome. As well as the opportunity to drink beer while chewing the fat (harder than it sounds!) there are a few activities planned. See www.hub-mag.co.uk/bfs for full details, and to register (places are limited, and almost full).
News: Hub has expanded
You may have noticed an extra name at the top of this week’s issue. The multi-talented Trudi Topham joins us from the excellent eZine, Pantechnicon. Trudi will be looking after our slushpile, as it has grown to monstrous proportions in the past six months. Her expertise and assistance will be most welcome!
About Hub
Every week we will be publishing a piece of short fiction, along with at least one review (book, DVD, film, audio, or TV series) and we’ll also have the occasional feature, too. We can afford to do this largely due to the generosity of the people over at Orbit, who have sponsored this electronic version of the magazine, and partly by the generosity displayed by your good selves. If you like what you read here, please consider making a donation over at www.hub-mag.co.uk.
The Music Company
by Eugie Foster
Lidi was flat on their bunk when Wilson stepped into their windowless, twenty-ninth story digs. The holovision blared some fem program with a glitzy off-world set and super gorgeous men and women prancing around, jiggling and rippling from all angles.
He muted it. With each step, Wilson's proxleg shot fire over absent nerves. The medics said the phantom pains should have faded by now, one year after he'd triggered that plasma snare. Yet, he still felt them every time he had to walk more than a metro bloc.
"Taro?"
His wife lolled in their slender bunk, her eyes opening to slits.
"Where's the boy?" he asked. "Taro! Come give daddy a hello." The single room had few hiding places for a not quite two-year-old, even one that had picked up the trick of outrunning his dada with remarkable precocity, although with imperfect brakes and steering.
Lidi tittered. "Have to call louder than that."
Wilson excused the derision in her voice; he knew she'd hoped for better when she'd married him, maybe even a chance to go off-world. Corporate hacking and security were big-ticket knacks back then, before the war started. The war still raged, shutting down most of the private sector economies, and leaving plebs like him suitable only for the military. But after Wilson had everything from his right thigh down sheared off in a trap, he wasn't even fit for that.
By the light of the holovision, Lidi's pupils were huge, expanded so wide the blue of her irises were thin rings. Lying next to her on the crumpled coverlet was a neon green, peel-off backing.
"You're kinked!"
"Utterly," she agreed.
"Where'd you get the credits?"
"Top of the line, lover. Got a whole strip of 'em. 'Nuff for you, too."
Wilson's hands gripped his wife's shoulders. "Where's Taro?"
"Gone gone gone." Her reply was a lilting sing-song. "Gone Daddy gone, Taro's gone awaaaayyy--"
He shook her until her head flopped like a broken doll's. "What did you do?"
Lidi plucked at his hands, the giggles shut off. "Q-quit shaking me."
He released her, and she fell back, boneless. Blinking through a haze of narco, Lidi sat and pushed a lock of dirty yellow hair from her face with a trembling hand.
"W-what're you doing home?"
"They couldn't use me. Where's Taro?"
The limb-quaver spread, shaking Lidi's body as though she had the chills. There was grim satisfaction in knowing he'd wrecked her high, but it was fleeting.
"Well?"
"I gave him something you couldn't." The wisp of defiance in her voice petered out mid-sentence.
"What's that mean?" His voice ricocheted off the dull walls.
Lidi glared. "Don't you raise your voice to me, you gimp!"
All his frustration, his desolation, peaked, and his hand lashed out before he could stop it. At the last moment, he regained enough of himself to open his fist, turning a punch into a slap.
Lidi pitched over, and her sobs filled the room. "I-I contracted him to the Music Company," she whimpered. "He'll get to go off-world, l-live it rich. He'll get to have everything we don't."
Wilson couldn't feel his hands, although the proxleg twanged like electricity over raw nerves. A joe did not hit a fem. Only monsters like the bangers in the inner cities beat on their fems.
"You were on the fringes when the recruiter came by, six days ago. They gave him tests. They said he scored tops and they wanted him." Lidi sniffled. "Wil, they told me he'll be well-treated, have a plush life."
He'd seen the adverts and recruitment blips; the Music Company looked for youngsters with so-called talent, promising off-world lives for the ones that made the grade.
"They'll turn him into a rich man's dress-up, bend-over doll," he said.
"He won't. The contract's solid. A legal stamped it." She grabbed the strip of narcopatches and dropped them in Wilson's lap.
"C'mon, Wil, fix one of these on." She peeled off one of the round, neon backings and extended the adhesive patch to him. When he made no move to accept her peace offering, Lidi stuck it to her own neck.
"Show me the contract," he said.
"It's on my chippy." Her voice became loose and happy as the narco took effect.
Wilson plugged his wife's personal data system into the reader. The PDS read the contract to him in the masculine, faintly Eastern voice that Lidi preferred.
The contract stipulated a transfer of full guardianship for Taro to the Music Company for a very generous fee. They promised to train him to be a recitalist, the price of his education paid by future commission earned.
It read clean, cleaner than a lot of the employment deals he'd signed. And there, glowing in gold letters, was the legal imprint.
Except. Except he hadn't had a chance to say goodbye, hadn't gotten to dangle the boy in his arms one last time. Except he'd never see his son again, never look in his laughing eyes, or hear him demand "Dada fly me!" as he came through the door.
Wilson was out of their digs and in the street before the thought coalesced. He would let Taro go, but only after he'd verified the Music Company wasn't a skin house.
Wilson heard the whoosh of the transit shuttle before its headlights turned his world monochrome--brilliant white and shadow. He didn't raise hand or head to summon it. The balance on his PDS was a fat null.
The opp that had taken him from Taro's side, the last in a long string of washouts, had been nothing but a techie chop. He'd spent his last credit on the transport to Burndock, six days of standing in lines, bribing middlemen for an interview, bunking in sleep-away coffins while he waited for his contacts to peep. Wilson would've swallowed his pride and jumped on as a low-grade mechanic, anything for an income. But they weren't looking for mechanics; they were in the market for runners and mules, joes desperate enough to load their brainpans with illegal tech and risk smuggling it across city sectors. One look at his proxleg and the interviewer had sneered behind his mirrorshades.
Wilson still had Lidi's PDS clutched in his hand. For once, he was glad she'd insisted on a full access marriage. She'd rationed his spending, tithing half of everything he made, but now he shunted an even fifty percent of th
e money the Music Company had paid for Taro to his account. When it flashed green, he summoned a cab and applied for a divorce.
His freshly positive balance dipped.
Leaving Lidi's PDS in the incoming slot of their, now her, digs, he keyed open the waiting cab and climbed in. Should it bother him that he'd never see his wife or the quarters they'd shared again? The ache in his leg troubled him more.
Destination? flashed on the cab's display.
"The Music Company," he said, enunciating into the voice grill.
Two street addresses appeared. One was located in the business district, an office in one of the soaring sky towers; the other was on the outskirts of the city, almost beyond the cab's limits. Neither address had a MORE link.
"Why can't I get more information?"
"Please repeat selection."
He scowled. "Music Company corporate headquarters."
One of the options, the rural one, disappeared, leaving the downtown one.
"Huh." Wilson contemplated the screen. "Try the Music Company legal department."
The display remained unchanged.
"Music Company contract office?"
Same address.
About to tap YES, Wilson paused. "Music Company training center."
The in-town address disappeared, replaced by the remote one. Of course. The shiny people in the swank buildings with the blue-sky views did all the recruiting and cajoling, but when they had the signatures, they ushered the plebs to the flats. The office wouldn't have Taro.
Wilson pressed his thumb to YES and swiped his PDS through the reader. His balance dropped, and the cab took off.
While the New Atlanta blocs wheeled by--sparkling glascrete side-by-side with dilapidated brick and mortar, microserfs in chic couture swaggering past joes in torn city-issue--Wilson tried to remember everything he'd heard about the Music Company.
The distinctive bugle blare and percussive march of the military's theme resounded through the cab's speakers. Join the army, be off-world in five years!
Wilson stabbed the NO button.
It switched to chiming bells and rippling synthichords. 10% off on generic stimjolts.
"Stop with the ad-blips!" Wilson pressed his thumb on the NO and left it there.
Instead of dissuading other blandishments from materializing, a symphonic prelude from one of the old-style musics replaced the ringing modhop.
Absolute repertoire in each recitalist from the Music Company guaranteed!
Wilson snatched his hand back. The blip continued, layering voice to text.
"Available for exclusive off-world contracts, every recitalist delivers a flawless performance every time! Equipped with a comprehensive repertoire of all musical work, from today's shakers, to obscure last millennium favorites. 100% human, real, live performers!"
Wilson tapped the YES. On the screen, a posh, off-world setting emerged from a flashworks of stylized cosmos--lofty ceiling over a sprawling room, joes and fems in elaborate, prismatic garb that dripped luxury, a spread of eats so varied and colorful Wilson couldn't identify half the tidbits on display. The milling crowd settled, reclining or perching on strategically placed divans and settees.
Excitement and anticipation charged the air, overflowing to fill the cab's passenger cabin. Applause leached from the speakers as a youth strode into the parlor. He was escorted by a beautiful fem, elegantly sheathed in a cloth-of-gold jumpsuit, platinum trinkets dangling from wrists and neck. It was obvious--clever vid angle or merely the boy's presence--that the fem, no matter how luscious, was not the showpiece.
She led the boy to a synthichord, cleverly incorporated into the décor to appear like an antique piano, complete with black and white keyboard and lacquer finish. The boy perched on the bench and plugged a thin wire into a port at the base of his skull; his fingers splayed over the keys, and he began to play.
The tune was deceptively simple, repeating a single theme in crescendoing intensity. With each iteration, a complex fusion of counter melodies and percussion grew, creating a tapestry of sound that was stirring, exciting, and soulful. It was everything New Atlanta wasn't, no metro kill fields, no streets filled with filth and regret. Just a melody, clear and sweet, without anything of the dreary cityscape to mar it.
When the final bars played, he wished it could have gone on.
If Taro's fate was to be like that boy's, to share some beauty with a refined and appreciative audience, Wilson could forgive what Lidi had done, maybe even applaud it. It'd be better than what he could've offered his son, slogging for the govcorps fresh out of a public edu, slinging boxes and crates for starving wages. And at the end of the day, the fleeting bliss of narco.
At least Taro would never be so desperate for credit he'd contract for inspection, walking through tech shops, hunting for traps.
But Wilson wasn't a slowmoe to be sold on corporate actors and propaganda. He would make sure it was solid.
The Music Company training complex appeared in the distance, a sprawling campus of gray concrete surrounding a squat dormitory tower. An oversized welcome board pointed the way to the visitor's entrance in pulsing holovision.
Wilson gripped the cab's seat. "No! Not the front entrance."
"Please repeat selection."
"Drop me at the back, behind the barracks."
"There is no such drop point for this destination."
"Is there any drop point except for the main entrance?"
"No."
"Then leave me here."
"Confirm?"
"Here!"
The cab coasted to a stop. "Thank you for your patronage. If you found the service satisfactory, we hope you will consider us again the--"
Wilson slammed the door shut.
The gut instinct that had kept him alive scrounging the banger shops, which told him to skip some jobs and pass by certain alleys through years of ghetto warfare, told him to stay on the sly. Of course, this was the same instinct that had remained mute when he'd opened up that banger house and blundered into the snare. Best not to hover on that.
Wilson circled the facility, a long jaunt for his bum leg. The area was set off by a barrier of crisscrossing struts and wire stretching past his head. When he estimated he was opposite the Welcome Center, he scaled the fence. He'd expected lookie-eyes or guards, but it seemed the only security was the metal-grate wall. Perhaps out here they didn't fear metro thugs?
It wasn't a hard climb, as things went. He'd shinnied up sheer walls looped in razor wire in the city, navigating hostile borders to make it to food dispensers. His leg gave him trouble, stiffening up when he bent it and throwing off his concentration. He landed poorly as he cleared the barrier, staggered by pain and gravity.
He crawled to the closest wall, ignoring the hurt. No matter how lax security seemed, bad luck could always nail a joe. It'd be dumb to get caught because someone happened to look in the wrong direction while he was flat in the open.
The thick, gray wall belonged to a thick, gray building. The only feature that set it apart from its neighbors was a letter and number: C-5. On either side were C-7 and C-3.
The door to C-5 was unlocked, a condition that boggled. Wilson cracked open the door and peered in. Lit by a faint, ambient glow, he saw a classroom, a big one. Reminiscent of a more affluent era, he recognized individual cubicles filled with terminals. Each cube also contained a complex keyboard, the business end of a synthichord.
Seeing the trappings of learning almost sent him skulking away, back over the fence and gone. If this was a skin house, they wouldn't have bothered with classrooms and fancy tech. And yet. He wanted to say goodbye to his son. What was the harm in that?
The center building, the barracks, was isolated by a perimeter of road. As he lunged from the alleys between the classroom huts, the twilight deepened to shadowed dusk. The breadth of silhouette and umbra promised some protection, meager as it was. When a door appeared on the plain face of the center building, Wilson broke from cover in a shambling
sprint.
Panting, he hunched in the doorway to inspect the lock's keypad. After one scan, his heart tumbled to his knees. There were no lookie-eyes or guards on the outer buildings because they didn't need them. They had this door, or rather this door's secure-loc. It was military grade with a rotating trigger and anti-intrusion safeguards. On his best day with a kit full of crackware, Wilson would've been hard pressed to jigger one of these, unplugged. To have a chance of popping it, he'd have to wire his tender, out-of-practice grey matter in. And if it was a particularly nasty model, it might zap his leads, frying him extra crispy from the inside out.
Still, he'd come this far.
He flipped open the output prongs of his PDS, gulped in a breath, and slid the pin-sized plug into the niche at the base of his skull. Alerted by his entry, the screen flickered to life.
WELCOME scrolled in green letters across the display.
Wilson relaxed into the interface, flexing unused muscles and stretching forgotten tendons. It was like rediscovering a lover's body in the dark, the planes and angles so familiar, but made alien by sightlessness.
Wilson sent his thoughts, modulated to machine-speak by a clever and fantastically illegal bit of tech, into the secure-loc. A gate opened. But the welcome was treacherous. A barb closed around the first tendril of data he launched, half-severing it and sending bile up his throat.
With a thought, he cut free the strand of executable. He unhinged the electronic teeth that had worried his virtual limb. It spun off untethered into the digital void.
The guts of the secure-loc opened. Immediately, he was assailed by a melting collage of colors. They bled like chalk pictures in the rain, the hues and textures dissolving into a pixilated blur.
Not colors, he reminded himself. Data. Just binary switches. Zeroes. Ones.
The churn of sickening gray sharpened, becoming a wash of textured spheres, punctured through by pinprick sticks. The impression was gross and organic, like putrid flesh riddled with pustules and needles.
Computers were not organic, nothing of flesh. He needed to find the pattern, the structure. Wilson shut his virtual eyes. His primary sense offline, his secondary ones clamored to play. A cacophony of sound flung itself at raw nerve endings, metal against metal, the crash of breaking glass, the liquid hiss of acid on skin. With each sound came its corresponding tactile stimuli--the fingernail grate of rasping steel, a shattered pane, and burning.
Hub - Issue 26 Page 1