by Robert Reed
Minus laughs aloud.
It’s what he wants. Their fear. That palpable sense of mistrust and loathing.
Dirk’s the important, notorious investor from Quito. And Minus is just a bodyguard to them. A hired lump of muscle. But the truth is different. He’s actually something larger, unlabeled and invaluable, looking out not only for Dirk but for all of his organization and keeping tabs on his enemies too…rather like a personal secretary of state.
Minus is through the bar and in a narrow hallway with locked doors labeled with the names of dues-paying members. The door marked Mayor Pyn opens for Minus, some AI greeting him by name, and he enters a carpeted lounge too small to impress anyone. In the corner, alone, sleeps a willowy man lying on a reclining chair. The Mayor’s personal medical gear, autodocs and such, is beside the man. A blockish woman is displayed on the opposite wall, on tri-dee, and she sees Minus as he enters and says his name with less feeling than the AI used, nodding and telling him, “The sedative’s still working. Let him sleep.”
He asks, “So. How’s the old warhorse?”
“Scrubbed. And blocked.”
“What did she do to him?”
“Just ordinary Flower dope. Mood-changing stuff. Love potions, if you will. Those kinds of poisons.” She is sitting in an office in Quito, the living picture of discretion. “I filtered his blood twice and got most of the physical stuff. The rest is being denatured now, slowly, and he’ll piss it away in a day or two. Don’t worry.”
“Scrubbed, huh?”
“And blocked. Like you told me. I used forced hypnosis to help him suppress residual feelings.” She explains the particulars to Minus, and the limitations. The past can only be obscured, not buried. Character? Nothing changes character.
“You should have seen him,” he says. “Lovesick’s the word.”
“I know.” Her expression is passive, her eyes held halfway closed. “For all intents and purposes, he was in love with that Flower.” She has seen this kind of love many times and cured the wickedness. Or so her voice implies.
“Well,” says Minus, “thanks.”
“Watch him for a couple days. Closely.”
“Yeah?”
“Denaturing pulls out his natural endorphins, too. He’ll be in some pain and his mood might be ugly—”
“Normal enough.”
“—because endorphins play roles in mood and controlling all kinds of pain. And the forced hypnosis, the blocking, may produce a few odd moments. Brains aren’t things you can change at will, you see.” She seems sorry that it’s not otherwise. “He may have episodes of unreasonable fears. Unexpected bouts of crying. That sort of thing.”
“No love left in him?”
“Too much love, really. But I’ve done everything possible.”
“I know,” he says. “And thanks.”
“These sorts of things vary from person to person. How badly it hurts. How long it persists.” No misunderstanding please. Her voice says it.
“Bill us,” he declares, “and thanks again.”
She nods, then vanishes. He wonders what Dirk might have said under hypnosis, and Minus sits beside Dirk and makes a mental note. Have an AI keep watch on the good doctor. Sure. The last thing they need now are their old enemies coming to get retribution. He breathes and looks at his boss, at his face and closed eyes, and he goes through the medical file and thinks back over these last months. Dirk had been suffering the love and everything had been so odd. There was a smoothness to Dirk, a tangible calmness, when he talked and when he moved. Maybe that’s why I didn’t press the Flower, thinks Minus. Maybe I liked Dirk smiling for a change. And when he decides that’s the case, he feels angry. And a bit surprised. Maybe I’m getting old, he thinks. Soft and lazy, he thinks. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the world itself getting younger and tougher. That’s the history of the world, he knows. It’s always been getting younger and tougher.
No change in me, he thinks.
Never.
“So who managed the safe for them?”
“Another insider. She’s an officer in the company that built the thing. This kid, our magician, says she told them a simple way to ease open the mag-locks. Household tools and some special equipment that fit in a cavity in the Flower’s thigh. The safe’s big feature, after all, was its invisibility. Not its strength.” Again Minus is rubbing Dirk’s nose in the mess, glancing up at the wall where the chips were hidden inside the toughest hyperfiber on the market. Not strength, no, but it was plenty strong anyway. “There’s a glitch in the way the safe recognizes its punch-in code. The builders found the glitch after the fact, and they’ve kept it a secret until now. Trying to find a patch for the damage, and all that.”
“How many are we talking about?”
“The Magician. The Flower. The safe officer, plus minor players. Some workers at the brothel. A street kid with muscle and weapons skills. Too many players, if you ask me. Too many mouths. Too many shares.”
Suddenly Dirk shifts his weight, his face turning pale. He says, “I hurt,” and breathes gently.
“I bet you hurt.”
“You read the doctor’s report?”
“Twice,” he says. “A Flower using Flower-style tricks. Nothing fancy. Strong doses, but nothing that could have spooked us.”
“I feel shitty.”
“I bet.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t you wear my pain a little while?” Dirk laughs and shifts in his seat, combing his hair with a shaking hand.
Minus finishes his drink and looks past Dirk, staring through the long Masking Glass wall. Its builders promise that it’s impervious to lasers and impacts and any explosives short of nuclear charges. The floor and ceiling are both similarly reinforced. Even if something knocked down the entire building, they’d be safe. In theory. A high-density foam would spray out from the floor and cushion the impact for everyone indoors. Of course a squatter, windowless bunker might make more sense. But then this perch has visibility, a presence, the security systems all second to none—hardened senses and half a dozen AIs hired to do nothing but scan and notice everything in the area, guessing if anyone has any evil intents.
The AIs weren’t watching indoors. Not last night. Not ever.
If they had seen the damned Flower, the reborn Ghost, whatever…she would have been caught. She wouldn’t have stood a chance. But then the AIs would be privy to every private word and act, and that’s the kind of knowledge you don’t give to anything. Not to people. Not to machines. Never.
“You should feel my fucking joints.”
He says, “I’ll pass.”
Dirk says nothing more. Minus studies his long, pained face with the big boyish eyes and the angelic chin and mouth and nose. He knows Dirk hasn’t always looked so innocent. He’s had surgery to retain the whiff of youthfulness and to enhance the sweet exterior. He claims it allows him to be liked by more kinds of people. They trust his face and eyes. The people who meet him expect something else, maybe picturing a Minus-style creature, and when they see the willowy form and the smiling face they tend to let down their guard for a little while.
“Is she letting me have anything for pain?”
“In stock and waiting.” He punches buttons on the console beside him.
“And how’s this pack of thieves doing?”
“Suffering. All but two.” Minus describes the various captures, then says, “There’s still the Flower and the muscle. The muscle left Quito a couple of nights ago, maybe later, with friends hired for a long trip. His job is extracting the Flower. The Magician says so.”
“And is he here?”
“Not that I’ve seen. I got the alarm out soon enough to catch him fleeing, provided he made his pickup.”
“And how are we hunting?”
Minus sketches the heart of what he’s doing. He’s got AIs watching Brulé wherever possible, and he’s got other AIs scanning World-Net with the usual intrusive systems. They watch who watches what and keep tabs on the kinds o
f information requested from libraries and data banks. A thief on the run should have peculiar viewing habits. At least they can hope so. And then there’s still another team of AIs eavesdropping on the nearby Farmsteads. Farmers use open channels. If they saw a floater filled with Quito types, coming in or going out, they’d likely tell one another and Minus, too. But so far there’s nothing. “And suppose he tries coming in now. We’re ready. We’ll see him all the way.” He asks, “And how long can a Flower hide? And how far can she go alone? Not long. Not far. So maybe we’re out of bad luck, finally. Maybe.”
Dirk shrugs. He has quit listening, his mind drifting and the expression on his injured face changing, growing darker. Minus knows what’s coming and he doesn’t so much brace himself as he makes himself relax. Let the fury sweep over him and past him and be finished. It’s something he’s learned through his years with Dirk. The man isn’t smart in a lot of ways, and he’d probably be smart to refuse a good rounded set of brains. What he is is a survivor, cruel and tough and normally impossible to fool. The various ways in which he robbed and swindled his fellow opportunists prove what it takes to succeed.
“Why do I pay you?” he asks.
Minus waits.
“I pay you a good living so I’m safe from small-timers and new talents and similar flavors of shit.”
Minus says, “Sure.”
“You’re a worthless sack of sphincters.”
He has no response.
“What did you tell me? That she was a Ghost? That before they pumped her inside that Flower body…she was dead?”
“It seems so.”
“And you know how I feel about Ghosts.” He hates them, sure. But the terror on his face is something new. Minus is surprised until he remembers the doctor’s warnings about mood troubles and such. “She was in here, and you let it happen. She was in my bed and had me so pumped full of chemicals that I couldn’t think a straight line. And you just watched!”
The forced hypnosis is talking. His suppressed feelings are coming out along his seams, Minus tells himself. Ignore it.
“She sees me open the safe once. Sure. That one was my fault—”
“You couldn’t help yourself,” Minus offers.
“But you should have picked up on things before. That’s what I’m saying.”
“You’re right.”
“Even checked on her pedigree.”
“I did.”
“A day late.”
“You’re right.”
“I should fire your hairy ass.”
That’s not the part you pay, thinks Minus.
And Dirk seems finished. Pain or exhaustion or maybe simple lack of interest causes him to turn quiet, sitting back in the cushioned chair so his aching joints can rest and recover. The painkiller arrived long ago. It’s been checked and mixed and checked again, and Minus automatically checks it himself. It’s a sweet drink, warm and dark. He hands it to Dirk and watches him take it all down and then asks if there’s anything else he wants now.
“How long before we’re cash poor?”
Minus makes a guess. A lot of the legal holdings are still in Quito, and turning them into Brulé currency might prove difficult. “When the time comes,” he mentions, “Brulé and the dear Mayor are not going to be patient with us. If we’re cash poor, they might reconsider our status.”
“If they learn it.”
“Sure.”
“And suppose they do.”
He doesn’t like their prospects. No other City-State will want them. Maybe some minor world. Maybe they could acquire new faces and identities and give up hoping to live well again. Or they can invent a new way of raising capital. “Maybe this is too soon,” he says, “but the kid, this Magician, is a real master of tricks. Some of them might mean big profits to us. For instance, Flowers can be more than Flowers in the future. Putting a person inside a functional upright body has never been done before now.”
Dirk seems to think. Then he says, “You’re right. It’s too soon,” and mutters something beneath his breath.
“We’ll find the two,” Minus promises. “Plus the chips.”
Dirk mouths the word, “Ghost.”
And Minus sighs and glances around the room—spacious and bright and decorated with the finest gemstone furnishings. He feels as if he’s saying good-bye to the surroundings. It’s an odd, unsettling sensation. He happens to let his gaze linger on a prominent panel along the far wall. It’s more sophisticated, and much more expensive, than a World-Net panel. It possesses olfactory functions and limited tactile functions and they are latched to channels unavailable to most people. Just a few weeks ago, standing centimeters from that panel, the honorable Mayor Pyn had held a drink in one hand and some discrete drugs in his blood and complimented Dirk on his splendid tastes. Dirk’s tastes, naturally, were purchased tastes. And when the Mayor sniffed the phony wind and pushed his free hand into the panel, stroking the rough blue face of the alien leaf, he asked what was this place and why did it look so familiar?.
It was a view being broadcast from Tau Ceti. From one of the handful of colony worlds.
Dirk boasted like a proud parent. He explained how this was a new panel, very rare. So far as he understood, there weren’t more than a few hundred outside Quito. Wasn’t it worth the tab? he inquired. Huh? That smell is alien biology talking. Those mountains in the distance? And that sky? No synthetic views generated by AIs. Just watch and you can tell they’re real. And it’ll be centuries before World-Net gears up for any of these functions!
What a master, thought Minus.
What a way to work on someone, winning favors.
The next day, first thing, Minus ordered an identical panel to be sent to the Mayor’s home. It cost a stiff fee, and it employed a bunch of AIs just to keep it working…but it had seemed smart at the time. A gift. Something unusual and desired, and the only trouble is that if things get tight in a week or two, whenever, they may have to quit making the payments. And if so…well, Minus doesn’t have to be a student of human nature to know what happens next. Pyn finds the courage to turn to his Chief of Police, telling her, “Throw them out and today. No warnings and no gloves.”
That’s what will happen.
Sure.
5
Hyperfiber denotes our time. Remember the Bronze Age? And the Iron Age? Then the Age of Plastic? Well, now we live deep inside the Hyperfiber Age in all its splendor, in all its majesty, and every day still brings new forms and new uses and hints of new possibilities. It has been brought on with the creation of ultrapure compounds of intricate design…hyperfiber, flexible or rigid, massive or light, capable of standing on a world’s waist or enclosing a man’s body or armoring the nose of the newest starships…I can’t quit applauding the stuff…!
—excerpt from a technical manual, available through World-Net
The angriest Morninger I have ever seen, without doubt, was a certain smallish woman who had just been insulted. A companion of hers, furious for obscure reasons, had screamed and thrown up his hands and called her a damned sack of machine parts. Not strong language! you might think. But to be accused of being a machine, in any context, makes any Morninger livid. And she was. Other companions had to restrain her. She roared and shot back her own saucy insults and finally was carried away, and after an hour or two I had a chance to speak to her and see the universe from behind her glass eyes…
“I’m no machine!” she maintained. “I’m as human as you! In my world I feel pain, I feel the heat, I’m mortal and small and cry in the night because of my fears!” She told what others had said in the past—that the flesh-on-blood you is merely enlarged by turning cyborg; that a small weakish girl remains a small weakish Morninger in adulthood; that an ugly face and form are retained with an honesty that Terrans and others might want to emulate; that Morningers, more than most people, know that what makes you or destroys you comes from within. Not from the hyperfiber, but from your soul. From your human character…
—ex
cerpt from a traveler’s notebook, available through System-Net
Gabbro is swimming. Or, rather, he has climbed into the pool and sunk to the bottom and now is working his muscles—the pliable hyperfiber muscles he relies on—running circles on the bottom of the pool. The water foams and churns and bubbles madly. He is the hub of a furious whirlpool. It’s a glorious sensation. Turning his enormous black head upward and backward, he sees the blue sky strained through the swirling coral-rimmed water. Fish are swimming without actually moving, faces into the current. Other little things cling to any surface they can find. A single Cradler appears against the sky, his expression puzzled and happy in that Cradler way. Then there’s April, hands on her ample hips and a scowl directed straight down at his happy heart.
He quits running.
Standing motionless, he lets the current die against his bulk. Then he bends and leaps with enough momentum to carry him up out of the pool with a rush, water spilling over the deck and April too, her shrill voice telling him what he can do to himself. She means it. She’s still not over this morning’s tussle, over his getting home late and no good excuse ready, but Gabbro doesn’t let it bother him. He’s gotten halfway used to her moods. He’s had no choice. And he knows how to tease her when she’s this way. He cackles like some goofy kid. He wants her to know how much fun he’s having.
Two little Cradlers are standing nearby, watching.
They’re laughing along with him, but he knows they’re frightened. April says they’re terrified of him. How silly, he thinks, and he shakes himself dry and sits on the oversized lounge chair and takes a chamois off the coral deck, wondering how many times he has told them he means no harm. Never. Don’t be afraid of me, he has said. A billion times at least.