“Kinda early for socialising,” she says. She checks out my sagging pecs. “Are you inviting me for a swim?”
She still has her make up on, she looks sussed, she looks great, she looks like it’s a big bright beautiful Saturday.
For me, everything starts to fall back down into normal. “I ... I just need to talk. Do you mind?”
“Not much. I hate nights as well.” She walks off and leaves her door open.
Her room smells of perfume. On the bed there are about eight stuffed toys ... puppy dogs, turtles. On the shelf there is a huge lavender teddy bear, still wrapped in cellophane with a giant purple bow.
“I got nothing,” she says, and flings her fake fingernails at the TV screen. For a second I think she means nothing in her life. Then I get it: she’s been hacking. On the screen are eight old faces and the photo of the guy who mugged my granddaughter.
I take a chair, and I start to feel strong again. “Me neither,” I say, meaning I got nothing out of SecureIT. “I’m ... uh ... kinda surprised that you’re doing this so openly.”
“Are you kidding? We’re doing our bit to catch Silhouette. I want any brownie points that are going.”
That TV is pointed straight at the surveillance. I gotta smile.
“You’re smart,” I say.
“Oh wow, really? Like I didn’t know that without you telling me.” She looks at me like I’m bumwipe.
I like her. “So has anybody else said you’re smart recently?”
She nods. She accepts. “Most people don’t give a fuck what you are so long as you can pay.”
“You got any family?” I lean forward, into the conversation. I want to hear.
“No,” she says, just with her lips, no sound. She breathes out through her nose. “I got property instead.”
“For real.” I understand. I flick my eyebrows. It’s like: so why do you have to hack, then?
. She gets it. She answers the question without having to hear it. “Keeps the brain in gear,” she says. “Beats talking to teddy bears.”
“At least you got one smart person to talk to.”
“Who?” She turns around and she’s dripping scorn, expecting some egotistical guy kind of remark.
I lean forward again. “You.”
“Oh.” She looks down and finally smiles. “Yeah, OK, I’m smart. Thanks. You want a whisky while you’re sitting there?”
“That’d be great.”
“Just a few more months in Neurobics and a six month course of PDA will replace the neurons you’re destroying.”
And I say, “Maybe I’ll die first.” It’s not such a joke.
She turns with the glass. “I hope not. Here.”
Mandy tells me about how she bought land in Goa and sold it for a dream. She talks about investing in broadband pipes while she was in her twenties so she could get out of lapdancing. She really did lap dance. I try to get her to talk more about herself. The only thing I get out of her is that she lived with her mother in a trailer until her Mom met a car dealer and they settled into a little bungalow in Jersey. “I’d go into my room and run shootemups on my video. I kept pretending I was shooting him.”
Finally I say, “I better go and see if they found Jazza.”
She nods and we both get up. And she says to me, “It’s real cool the way you still look out for him after all these years.”
I say, “He’s part of my crew.”
“Come off it,” she says. “He’s the only crew you got.” But she says it in a real sweet way.
The next morning, I got a mail on my TV.
It’s from the Kid. They’ve found Mr. Novavita on a Greyhound bus going to south Maryland. Jazza hasn’t lived in Maryland since he was a kid and his parents moved to Jersey. How the hell did he do that?
They bring him back in about noon and he looks like the night has been beating him up: purple cheeks, brown age spots, clumps of thick greasy grey. It wasn’t the night: this is how Mr. Novavita looks now and keep forgetting that. But he still climbs trees.
“He’ll be OK. He’ll sleep,” says the Kid.
I see his glasses on the table, and there’s another feather duster thought. “He was wearing these?”
I put them on. There’s a transcoder, but it’s built right into the arm. High tech. Higher than mine. There’s glowing fire all along the Kid’s arm. Heat vision. For night?
“Fancy glasses,” I say.
I go down to my crew. We’re all hacked back, so we’re sorted for cash flow. Thug has done some work on the suits. He has this little radio he plays, so they can’t snoop our dialogue.
Thug says, “XOsafe’s iced solid. So we hacked into the police files.”
“What!” My voice sounds like an air pump on arctic ice.
“We have a plant on the police computer,” says Jojo. Tells us whenever we’re mentioned. We added Brewster. Got a lot. They reckon Silhouette could be you.”
“What, ME?”
Mandy just barks, and waves at the smoke like she’s waving away the dumbest thing she’s ever heard.
I’m still stuck in high gear. “They think I’m Silhouette!”
“You were the prime suspect. Until your own granddaughter got it.”
I’m outraged. “Dumb shits!”
Jojo says: “Not so dumb, apparently. There’s a line they’ve been following, right into the Happy Farm.”
Mandy barks. “Oh I don’t believe it. This place?”
I take a look at her cheekbones. There’s this funny tickle in my head. It’s recognition. Of something. All of a sudden it’s like I’m hearing someone else ask her, “Is it you?”
Only it’s me that said it. The room goes cold. The radio plays dorky lounge. “Mandy. I asked are you Silhouette?” What I mean by this is strange: I really want to tell her don’t worry, we’ll protect you if you are, I kind of feel like I’ve said that. But that’s not what’s coming out. Actually, I’m just not in control. Because, as you will see, there’s something else going on here.
Mandy’s face kind of melts. All the lines in it sag, like she holds them up by constant effort. Her eyes go hollow and suddenly you see how she would look if she let herself become a little old lady. Hurt, confused. She shakes her head and the jowls go in different directions. She stands up and her hands are shaking. “Dumb old fucks.”
I get a feeling like I’ve just been real mean to someone, who I shouldn’t be mean to. And I don’t know why.
Gus shouts after her. “You haven’t exactly shown much concern about the people they hurt.”
I go gallumphing after her in my callipers. “C’mon Mandy, nothing personal.” She just shows me her back. “Mandy?”
She spins around and she’s got a face like a cornered porcupine. “Space off!”
“Mandy, the cops think there’s a line out on this stuff from here and they’re not dumb.”
Her eyes point towards the floor. She’s talking to the air. She’s talking to her entire life. “Every time I think maybe, just maybe, there’s somebody who has any idea ... who just. ... SEES! ME! That’s when I get kicked in the teeth again.” She looks up with eyes like a mother tiger, and she’s sick and mad. “Just space off back to your little crew. Go play your little boy games.” Her voice goes thin like mist. “I don’t have time.”
None of us have.
“I’m sorry.”
She stays put, staring out through the grey window onto the lawn.
“Mandy. I’m sorry. You know why I asked? It’s because I know I know that face under the black stuff. I’m sure I know who it is, if I could just remember. And for a flash I thought ... hey. Who says Silhouette is a guy? I just said it, the minute I thought it. I’m sorry.”
She turns and looks back at me. Unimpressed. Tired. “I found something out,” she says. “I was so proud of myself. I actually thought, Brewster’ll be pleased.” She sniffed and pulled in some air. “I got the faces of the guys in the suits, and the guys who mugged your granddaughter. I kept running ’em though, al
l night long. The cops must know this. But.”
She looks so tired. She looks like she’s going to fall asleep standing up.
“All those guys have Alzheimer’s.”
I let that sink in. Mandy didn’t move. It was as if her whole body was swelling up to cry. She just kept staring out the window.
“Alzheimer’s?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of like Attack of the Zombies? We lose our minds and they send us in to steal. We’re just bodies, meat. They won’t need us for even that soon.”
The grey light through the grey window, on her nose, on her cheeks. It made her beautiful.
I thought of the glasses on the bed, with built-in transcoders. The glasses will tell you who your friends are. They’ll tell you it’s time to take your pill. They’ll tell you that you have a plane to catch, and how to get out of the Happy Farm and where the pickup point is.
I think cheekbones. I think a shrivelled cricket’s face.
“Oh shit,” I say, like my stomach’s dropping out. “Oh, SHIT!” Already I’m walking.
“Brewst?” Mandy kind of asks. Godamn callipers. I’m hobbling up and down like a fishing cork, I’m trying to run and I can’t.
“Brewst. What is it?”
Hey, you know, tears, are streaming down my face? I suddenly feel them. My elbow kind of knocks them off my face. Those bastards, those bastards are making me cry.
“Brewster? Wait.”
Mandy’s tripping after me.
And all I can think is: Jazza. Jazza, you’re worth so much more than that. You used to design things, mix music, girls would look at you with stars in their eyes. Ahhhhccceeeeed! Dancing with your shirt off on the brow of a bridge, young and strong and smart and beautiful. Jazza.
You’re not just a meat puppet, Jazza. I hope.
I’m still crying, and I’m bumping into things because I can’t see.
Back in his room Jazza is sitting up on the edge of his bed staring, looking at the corners of the ceiling like he can’t figure them out. I sit and stare and look at the flesh that’s as shrivelled as his life tight all around his wrists, his ankles his skull, his cheeks.
I’m aware that Mandy’s standing next to me.
I put on Jazza’s glasses. I try a couple of passwords: Age Rage, Silhouette. Nothing. Then I take a stab at something else:
Iron Man.
And then his glasses say to me. “Where did you read comics as a boy?”
I say back. “Trees.”
And there’s a flash of light, brighter than the sun, up into my eyes, into my head. And I know for certain then. It’s checking my retinas.
Then it all goes dark. I’m not Jazza. So the program won’t open, but hey, it doesn’t need to open.
I look at the face again, just to be sure.
“Mandy,” I croak, and I’m real glad she’s there. “Meet Silhouette.”
And the only thing I’m feeling is gratitude. I’m just glad that Jazza was more than a zombie. I’m just glad that he was more than that. I still can’t quite see, my eyes inside are dappled by the retina check. I’m thinking of all the times he did freelance for me: on the software, on all that VAO. He worked on it, he would know how all the ordnance cooked.
And I get it.
You see, you’re this smart guy. You’ve buzzed all your life, but there’s no money, and you’re losing your mind. Maybe you get told by some young stuck-up intern doing time on the social programs that he’s real sorry that your insurance won’t pay for the drugs. You’re poor so you get to lose your marbles. So you get mad. You get mad at everybody, at the world, at God. You turn all your brain onto one final thing. You plan ahead, for when you’re gaga and beyond being charged or convicted. You invent Silhouette and store him up, and set the bugs loose to search for a new kind of crew.
You get your revenge.
Mandy takes my arm and shakes it. “Brewst. Brewster,” she says. All she can see is some sad old fuck dissolving into tears. She can’t understand that I’m crying because I’m happy. I can’t understand it either.
I just know in my butt: Jazza thought of this.
“He was Silhouette,” I say, and breathe in deep.
“How?” demands Mandy. Hand on hip, Mandy won’t buy just any fairy story.
I feel reasonably cool again as well.
“Silhouette’s not a person, its a program, a series of programs that all work on the same algorithms. The programs take you over, tell you what to do, how to do it. Maybe what to say. Maybe you get to be Silhouette for a while and if you’re gaga enough you won’t even know it. So trace Silhouette then. One week he’s in Atlanta, the next he’s in LA, the next week he’s in New York. They’ll be hacked into the glasses. The glasses and the terminals and the crude little chips in your head.”
I go to Jazza’s machine. And look for the files. I won’t be able to open any of them, of course, but of course there is a whole directory. Anything encrypted is enough to get you. The directory is called Aphrodite. What we called our spaceship to Mars. Everything in it’s encrypted and the file sizes are huge. That ain’t no banking hack.
“That’s it,” I say. “That’s the masterplan.”
I look back at Jazza. He looks like a little boy in a bus station waiting for his Mom to show up before the bus goes.
I open up the e-mail package and start keying in. I shop Jazza. It’s painless. Just an e-mail to Curtis, to the Armament. Over in two minutes. And all the while I’m doing it, I feel proud. Proud of him.
“Sorry, Jazza.” I tell him. I take hold of his hands. That makes me feel better. “They’ll wipe the program. That’s all. No more trips to Maryland.”
He looks back at me like a baby. He’s not sure who I am, but he trusts me.
Five minutes later, the Kid slips in.
“Sorry Mr. Brewster,” he says quietly. “Sorry it was your friend.”
The Kid comes from a country where people are still human. The sorrow is upfront in his eyes.
I ask him. “What’s Curtis doing?”
“Damage limitation.” It’s the kind of jargon you learn early in our part of the world. It eats your soul. “He worry about the Home.”
“His own ass,” corrects Mandy.
The Kid can’t help but smile. But he sticks to the point. “You do right thing, Mr. Brewster.”
Isn’t it great how people can still care about each other? Isn’t it some kind of miracle sometimes?
This time the cops show up in a plain car, and this time it’s IT specialists not Armament. They start going through Jazza’s station. Jazza starts to sing to himself, some dumb old toon about everybody being free, it’s all love, let’s just party down. Did we really think that was all it took?
He lets them take away his machine, and he just curls up on the bed, back to us all. I say something corny like “Sleep well, old friend.”
And the Kid says, “I watch him for you, Mr. Brewster.”
Mandy and I slump off to the bar and the Neurobics are all there before but before we can say anything Gus jumps us and says, “you guys gotta see this!”
Mandy says. “Do we?”
The whole crew are leaning over the newspaper. “I’ll rerun it,” says Gus.
“Fasten your seat belt,” says Mandy, and she gives me a long look like: I’m tired of these bozos.
On the newspaper is a wall of people and the label says:
Latest VAO attack SHU TZE STADIUM 8.35 pm last night.
The whole thing looks like diamonds, huge overhead lights, flashing cameras, halfway through a night game. Gus has plugged in his speakers, so we get the TV announcer too, and the sound of the crowd. The camera moves to a big guy on the mound chewing gum, thumping the ball into his mitt, and looking pissed off.
Over the stands a kind of rectangle just hangs in midair. It looks like it should be there, just part of the stadium, you have to blink to realize its hovering. It’s a rescue platform, designed for getting people out of tall buildings in midair. It look
s as small as a postage stamp, only it’s crowded with exoskeletons.
On all the tall cathedral lights, red lights start flashing and sirens rouse themselves.
One announcer says, “That’s the fire alarm, John.”
“Yup and those are firemen. Though I have to say right now, I can’t see any sign of a fire.”
“If there is, John, official figures estimate that it takes 15-20 minutes to clear the stands here at Shu Tze Stadium.”
On the field the players stand morose and still, hands on hips. Their show is over.
Firemen stumble off the platform. It bobs. Close up, the platform is more unstable than a rowboat. The suits hop down, straighten up and start to jog up the steps through the stands. You can see it now that there’s a lot of them in unison: the suits move in unison.
On the field one of the fat little umpires is running as fast as he can.
A police car comes driving straight onto the diamond.
“Certainly something is happening here at She Tze, Marie, but it may not be a fire. That’s Lee van Hook, manager of the Cincinnati Reds getting out of the police vehicle. And he’s waving his hands, yes, he’s waving the players off the field!”
You hear a crunching. It’s a nasty goose-stepping sound, and the camera blurs back to the stands. All the suits have raised automatic weapons at once. And they’re jammed straight at the crowd.
Speakers crackle and a feedback whine shoots round the stadium.
And a voice like Neptune bubbling out of the sea says, “This is a public service announcement.”
Announcer cuts in. “John, reports are saying this is a VAO attack.”
“You are going to help the aged. You will pass all valuables, watches, wallets, jewellery to the men and women with the guns.
“Just to repeat that, we are witnessing a VAO attack here live at She Tze Stadium.”
The digital gurgle goes on. “For your own safety please remember, that some of the people with the guns will die soon and have nothing to lose. Many of them cannot think for themselves and so will shoot anyone who resists.”
A kind of roar is spreading all through the crowd.
“You won’t pay taxes. You won’t let us into your houses. We save and plan and invest and insure and in the end that still is NOT enough. What you should do is love us. It’s too late for love, now. Now is the time for money. What you are going to do now is give us your wallets.”
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection Page 64