Globalhead

by Bruce Sterling

  Jim thought that he ought to sit her down and talk it over with her. But he was tired and sick, and he’d never been much good at Big Serious Talk with women. He was sure that once they started Big Serious Talk there’d be no end to it.

  The bathroom was a snug little cell of spotted Formica and sheetrock. He locked the door, turned on the squeaking tap. Harsh metallic water from a deep desert aquifer, hard as nails.

  Jim lay naked in the cramped tub, gently washing his crusted aching nose, wondering about her. Wondering what the heck she really wanted and what, if anything, it had to do with him. Out there in the room alone … she might be (a) calling the cops, or (b) panicked and gone for good, or (c) waiting for him with her gun in her hand. Or even, possibly, (d) lying naked in bed with the covers up to her chin and an expectant look on her face. Jim thought that in a lot of ways (d) might be the worst alternative of all. He wasn’t up for (d), it would change too much, be too weird. Then he realized with a groggy rush of fatigue that he’d already forgotten what (a) and (b) were …

  He struggled out of the tub, skin flushed and head pounding. He wiped himself with a towel, struggled back into his stale jeans and T-shirt. He opened the door.

  Irene sat in the room’s only chair, beside a wall lamp, reading the motel’s Gideon Bible. The room was freezing—she hadn’t bothered to turn on the heat. Or maybe she didn’t know how. Jim staggered across the room, thumbed the thermostat up all the way, and got shivering into one of the beds.

  Irene looked up from her Bible. “Are you very sick, Jim?” she said slowly.

  “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  She folded the Bible over her finger. “Can I help you make better?”

  “No. Thanks. I gotta get some sleep, that’s all.” He pulled the covers up. The chills weren’t going away. He watched her through slitted eyes, forced himself to think. “You must be hungry, right? You know how to order a pizza?”

  She held up a pack of peanut butter crackers. Machine snacks. “Oh,” Jim said. “Yeah, those are … real tasty.”

  “I always want to read this book!” Irene said, with a tone of deep satisfaction. She opened the cracker pack and started munching.

  Jim awoke in stifling, superheated air. He got up and turned off the thermostat. Irene heard him moving and sat up in the other bed, looking startled from sleep, lost, afraid. Hair stood up all over her head. She’d gone to sleep with her hair still wet from the motel’s shower. “Morning,” Jim croaked, and retreated into the bathroom.

  He gargled hard, for his newly sore throat. Then he brushed his teeth, and pulled his hair back, and caught it in a ponytail band. He shaved.

  By the time he came out, she was up and fully dressed, brushing fitfully at her hair in the mirror. Same clothes. The only ones she had.

  Nothing was settled between them, but a lot of the fear had gone. They had successfully spent a night, more or less together, without an outbreak of rape or gunfire. Irene looked wary, but more composed.

  “How are you today?” he said.

  “I am fine, thank you,” Irene said.

  “Great,” he said, and mopped at his nose. “Today we’re gonna do Santa Fe and make us some money.”

  They had breakfast at an International House of Pancakes, then made three quick money stops. When he could, he hit telephones next to the highways, because the get-away was simpler.

  He now discovered that he had hit two of these phones before. The Gadget had left little keyhole scratches, not big ones, but enough to tell. He figured the scratches had to be at least three years old.

  He stopped at a suburban branch bank, and sent Irene in with a jingling canvas bag. She returned with four twenties, and a tense, triumphant smile. “You did good,” he told her. He gave her one bill and stuffed the other three in his wallet. “Did they ask questions?”

  “No.”

  “They don’t, usually. Were you scared?”

  “No,” she said. She jammed her hand into her purse, and pulled out the motel Bible. “Look, Jim, I stealed this.”

  “You stole a Gideon Bible?”

  “Yes, I stole,” she corrected herself. “I smuggle it out. Like a gypsy.”

  “Man, those Gideons will have a fit,” he told her. “You’re gonna be ripping off mattress tags, next.”

  She thought about it. “Okay, Jim,” she said. It should have been funny, but somehow it struck him as terribly sad.

  During the afternoon they hit three more phones. More work than usual, but living for two would take funds. He stopped at a cavernous Western apparel chain store, south of Santa Fe, and bought them new jeans and shirts and socks.

  On impulse, as they were checking out, he bought her a cheap straw cowboy hat. He perched it on her head. She still looked weird, and not far from desperate. But with the hat on, her weirdness looked suddenly very American—she looked like some kind of crazed Depression Okie.

  Maybe she was a little scary looking. It didn’t bother Jim much. He didn’t expect real women to look like the gals on TV.

  Besides, he was scary looking himself. There were days when he would see himself in the mirror and wonder what the hell had happened. Days when he looked hunted and scared, a loser, with deep lines around his eyes that signaled Rip-Off Artist to every cop and motel clerk in America. On days like that he would just stay in his van, grip the wheel behind the tinted glass, and drive.

  That evening they took Highway 25 out of Santa Fe, south. It brought them out of the mountains and junipers and into the plains. Around ten that night they hit Albuquerque. They set up in another motel, a small one this time, some kind of 50s mom-and-pop place called the Sagebrush. Thirty years ago it had catered to the road trade, to the big Airstream trailers and the chromed station wagons. But the town had sprawled out around it, and the airlines had taken its road trade, and now it was a place where sad married drunks could cheat on each other. Dust coated the rustic frames of cowboy paintings, and the old color TV would not turn down below a hissing, squeaking mutter.

  Jim was feeling a little better tonight, not quite so beaten and low, so he hauled in some of his toys from the van. The VCR with its carton of cassettes, the Macintosh with its modem and hard disk. He plugged a surge-protector power strip into an outlet by the second bed.

  Irene sat on the edge of the mattress and stared into the huckstering television. “We didn’t worry about ‘static cling,’ when we wrapped rags on our feet in the Gulag.”

  “Uh … yeah,” Jim said. “Listen, I’ll get that dumb crap off the air in just a sec. We’ll have some fun.” He hooked up the back of the TV and fired up the video unit. Gray snow hissed. “You ever see one of these before, Irene?”

  “Of course. Video.” Sounded like weedy-o. “I can use it. I know.”

  “How about a turbocharged Macintosh? Ever seen one of these babies?”

  “My husband was engineer, he knowed computers very well.”

  “Good for him.”

  “He did science mathematics on big state computer.”

  “Must’ve been a hell of a guy,” Jim said sourly. He opened the box of videotapes, picked one out. “You ever see Every Which Way But Loose? Man, I love this flick.”

  Irene looked curiously into the box, picked out a tape. She examined its cover and gasped. “This is porno!” She dropped it as if her fingers were scorched. “I am not watch porno!”

  “Jeez, relax, okay?” Jim said. “Nobody’s asking.” Irene was pawing through the box, her face curdled with disgust. “Hey,” Jim said. “That’s my stuff, private. Take it easy.”

  She jumped up from the bed, her thin arms trembling. Real fear on her face, Jim thought, surprised and a little shaken. He wondered what the hell had gotten into her. She was taking a little harmless smut awful hard, he thought.

  They watched each other silently.

  Finally her words came in a tense rush. “Are you very sick, Jim? Do you have AIDS?”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Jim shouted. “I’v
e got a cold, that’s all! Of course I don’t have AIDS. What the hell do you think I am?”

  “You have no friends,” she said suspiciously. “You are living all alone. Always running, hiding …”

  “So what? That’s my business! Where are your friends, anyway? I guess you and Comrade Husband were real popular back in Magnetville, huh? Kind of explains why you’re over here now, right?”

  She looked at him, her eyes wide.

  The fit of temper coursed, left him tired, more angry at himself than at her. “Cripes,” he said, half-shrugging. “Sit down, will you? You’re making me nervous.”

  Irene leaned against the flower-printed wall, bracing her shoulders, her hands knotted. She stared darkly at the carpet.

  “Jeez,” Jim said. “Listen. If you’re that paranoid about me, why don’t you just split? You got enough money for bus fare now. Go back to Los Alamos.”

  Irene took a deep breath, sighed it out. She looked wretched.

  Then she nerved herself up. She caught his eye and spoke flatly. “Jim, I’m not going to let you.”

  “Let me what?”

  She was resigned, her sharp jaw set. A real point-of-no-return, truth-or-consequences look. “That is what you truly want, yes? It’s why I’m here. You want me to let you.” She saw he didn’t understand, and her mouth tightened. “Let you do it,” she insisted, her voice harsh with embarrassment. “Man and woman, yes?”

  “Oh,” Jim said. “It. I get it.” He blinked, thought about it, and got mad again. “Yeah? Well who the hell’s asking you?”

  “You would ask,” she said with certainty. “A woman knows these things.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Well maybe I’d ask, and maybe I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t ask now. Not while my goddamn nose is running.” He kicked at the scragged-out carpet with the heel of his boot. This business was making his neck ache. “Look, I’m not eighteen, y’know. I’ve been around. I don’t have to tear the clothes off every woman I see.”

  She ran her hand through her hair, a strange ducking motion of the neck. “I am the thief, okay,” she said. “And gypsy, okay. But I am not whore, Jim.”

  “Look,” Jim said, “if I wanted a whore I can buy one. I don’t have to drive her around with me in my goddamn van.”

  “What is it, then?” she demanded. “If you don’t want me to let you, then what is it? Why are you driving me?”

  “Heck,” Jim said vaguely, surprised. “I felt sorry for you. I just thought you ought to be free. Free, like I am.” She stared at him. He shrugged. “Is that so strange?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” he said. “Maybe it is. I dunno.”

  Irene dug in her jacket, lit a Marlboro with thin blue-knuckled hands, shook the motel match out. She seemed less afraid of him now, not believing what he said, but watching him, with a kind of suspicious interest.

  Jim spread his hands. “I kinda lose track of what’s strange and what’s not. It’s been a long time, you know … Other people’s standards, they never meant that much to me.”

  “That does not tell me why,” she said.

  “I didn’t think about why. It was just something to do.” That got him nowhere; she only narrowed her eyes and blew smoke.

  He tried again. “I guess we don’t have a heck of a lot in common, you and me. But in a way, y’know, I figure that we got a lot in common. More than most people. Normal people.”

  She tilted her head. He was beginning to get through to her. “We are refugees.”

  “Hey,” Jim said, “free spirits, come on. Refugees don’t have diddly. Look at all this great stuff! Look at this, I’ll show you something wild.”

  He turned away from her, and fired up the Macintosh. Irene stood warily, then watched over his shoulder as he shuffled screen icons with the mouse.

  He hooked the motel phone’s headset into an acoustic coupler. The Mac bleeped through a series of digits.

  An electronic bulletin board came online. The Mac shot through the log-on sequence, screen dissolves flicking away like green sheets of electric Kleenex. “What is this?” Irene said.

  “Hackers,” Jim said. “Phone phreaks.”

  “What is that?”

  “People who steal phone service. Long-distance codes, and stuff.”

  “These are not people,” Irene said. “These are only words on a television.”

  Jim laughed nasally, touched his nose to his cuff. “Don’t be a rube, Irene. There’s a whole world of these guys.”

  “Computers. Not people.”

  “No, it’s even weirder than that,” Jim said reluctantly. “It’s not just hacker whizzes nowadays, but street guys, real hustlers. I’ve seen ’em, they hang out at big airports. You give ’em five bucks, and they go into a phone booth, and they can call you up Hong Kong, London … Moscow maybe, anywhere you want.”

  She looked at him blankly. “It’s those new phone services,” he said. “Sprint, MCI, like that. It’s all gotten really chaotic.”

  “Chaotic?” she said. “What is that?”

  “Chaotic means …” Jim paused, puzzled. What did chaotic really mean, exactly? It was a damned weird word, when you stopped to think about it. Philosophical, almost. Heavy.

  “Chaotic means that something is all scrambled-up, and complicated, and, uh, unpredictable … I guess what it really means, basically, is that it’s something you can’t understand. Maybe something you could never understand.”

  “Like, confusing?”

  “Yeah.” He watched the screen spool through lists of pseudonymous posts. Warnings, secrets, jargon. “Y’know, when I got started it all looked really simple. It was like, just, The Phone Company. One big crowd of suits, Ma Bell, Them. Man, they had the whole country wired coast to coast, thousands of workers, billions of big bucks …

  “But then they wanted to get into computers. The big hot growth industry, real up-to-date, right? But to do that, they had to give up their phone monopoly. And they did it! They just gave up all that centralized power they had. I still don’t understand why.

  “So now it’s all different. You take away the Phone Company’s big scary rep, see, that mystique I guess it is, and … they’re not so much, after all. Just another company, trying to hustle a buck …”

  He could tell that she didn’t understand him, but she seemed to read his tone of voice. “And this makes you sad, Jim?”

  “Sad?” He thought about it. “I dunno. Confused, I guess. It was so different when it was Me versus Them, one little guy, y’know, goin’ up against the biggest fat cats I could find.… I hated ’em … sort of … but even if they were big, and bad, and unbeatable, at least that meant I understood something. They were the fat cats, and I was Robin Hood. But now I’m not even a player. There are phone phreaks, these software guys, they live in the telephones, just sit up all night eating Twinkies and typing code … kids, some of ’em.”

  “It is America,” she said. “A strange country.”

  “Maybe we invented it,” he said. “But it’s gonna be everywhere, someday.”

  She peered into the screen as if it were a porthole, and looked uneasy. “Gorbachev, he talks computer propaganda now, very much.”

  “High-damn-tech,” Jim said, “it’s all around us, really.” He smiled at her. “You wanna log on to the board, Irene? You gotta pick a funny name—a handle.”

  “No.” She ground out her cigarette, yawned. “All these machine are on my bed, Jim.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, I guess we can’t have that.” He logged off the board, and shut the computer down.

  She woke him early, shaking his shoulder.

  “Jim. Jim.” She was frightened. Her taut face, inches from his own. He sat up. “Is it cops?” He glanced at his digital watch. 6:58 A.M.

  “The television,” she said. She pointed at it; it was hissing in the corner, its screen filled with bright static. Jim grabbed for his glasses, hooked them over h
is ears.

  The room swam into focus. The VCR was still hooked up, a Marlboro smoldered in an ashtray, on the floor, beside the controls.

  Jim squinted. “So,” he said. “You busted the VCR, is that it?”

  Suddenly he registered the mess across the floor. Thick wads of thin videotape, all tangled and mangled up. He remembered a dim dream of gabbling, rustling. “What the hell?” he shouted. “You jammed my tapes? What, eight, ten of ’em. How could you do that?”

  “Look at the television,” she said. “Look!”

  He glanced at it. “Static.” He got out of bed in his shorts, stepped into his jeans, rage swarming over him.

  “I get it. My porn tapes. I can’t believe it! You trashed ’em! You deliberately trashed my stuff!” His voice rose. “You cow! You dumb bitch! You ruined my stuff!”

  “No one should watch such things.”

  “I get it,” he said, zipping his jeans. “You were looking at ’em, weren’t you? You got up while I was asleep, to sneak a look at filthy porno. But when you saw it, you couldn’t handle it, could you? You just completely lost it. You know how much that stuff costs?”

  “It is trash! Filth!”

  “Yeah, but the best trash, damn it. ‘Debbie Does Dallas,’ ‘Midnight Cowgirls.’ … I can’t believe this. This is how you pay me back, huh, for picking you up? Man, I oughta …” he clenched his fist.

  “Okay, hit me,” she shouted at him. “Hurt me, like a big man! But then you listen to me!”

  “No,” he said, picking up his boots. “I’m not gonna hit you. I ought to, but I’m like a real gentleman, right?” He put on yesterday’s socks. “Instead, I’m gonna leave your ass, right here in this motel. You’ve had it with me, girlie. This is it. Adios City.” He stood up in a fury, jammed his feet into his boots.

  “Look at the television,” she said. “Please look, Jim.”

  He looked again. “Nothing,” he said. “Turn off my goddamn VCR. No, wait! Let me do it.”

  “Look very hard,” Irene said. Her voice trembled. “Can’t you understand?”

  He looked again, seriously this time.