by John Shirley
“I know the drill. But who is this?”
“You ever hear of Clive the Hive?”
“I’ve heard of him, sure. I thought he was out in eastern Oregon.”
“He’s out there just like you’re in Las Vegas.” Candle could feel Danny staring at him now.
“Oh right. They say he’s got huge processing power. So he’s ... interested? He knows about the undermarket?”
“He is. But he’ll have to meet you in person. I’ve got a contact—Zilia—Well it doesn’t matter. Clive approves of the whole thing. He wants to do it. He’s got a whole system for making them think it’s someplace it’s not. He’s got a wipe program that’ll take it down in twenty seconds if there’s a raid. He’s got vast processing, his own energy sources, he’ll give you a lot more leeway.”
“Dangerous as hell, though,” Shortstack said. Then he grinned. “I’ll do it! I’m gonna take another chance on you, Candle. I just always had a feeling about you. That’s what I do, I go with the gut feelings. But if they get to you somehow ...” Shortstack glanced at Danny.
“I’m not going to tell them anything no matter what, ’Stack. I got to go. You tell the others I’m looking out for them best I can.”
“You going to be there with me—up north?”
“Naw. Me and Danny going to hit the road. See what’s still there.” That was an expression that had been going around just before his UnMinding: Let’s go see what’s still there.
“I gotcha. Well. You want to work with us—you know where to find us then. If we can make a deal with ‘the Hive’.”
“You want the advance back you gave me? I still got most of it.”
Shortstack shook his head. “You earned it.”
Candle put a hand out and, in lieu of shaking hands, squeezed Shortstack’s shoulder. “See you.”
He and Danny left Shortstack at the junk building, and made their way across the trashy, wind-raked lots. They were almost to the gravel road where they’d left the van they’d hired from a black market rental dealer—no names, the trading off the grid—before Danny articulated what was in the air between them.
“So big brother,” Danny said, his voice tonelessly hoarse. “‘Saint Rick’. You got to Clive through Zilia. She wouldn’t give that up easily. You must’ve got to her first.”
“Yeah, we ... have a thing. I don’t know how serious it is. If you want ...” He forced himself to say it. He really didn’t want to say it. “If you want, I’ll stop seeing her completely. But, you know, seemed to me you guys were not seeing each other for a while now ...”
“I stopped seeing her because I didn’t think I could ... like I said about the broken table. I couldn’t hold up under her ... her expectations. I’d disappoint her. But it never felt right, Rick, being without Zilia. I wanted to be with her.”
“You thinking of trying it with her again?”
“Was thinking about it, for awhile ... thinking that after I got straight ...”
Candle nodded, kept his face neutral, as if it didn’t bother him; as if he didn’t feel like he was, himself, breaking furniture inside. “Then I won’t see her again.”
Danny shook his head. “She always had a thing for you. And now—knowing that you and her were together—and that if you stopped seeing her you were just ‘Saint Ricking me’ again ... No, fuck it. She’d be thinking about you, not me. No. No fuck that drop call. I’m not issuing.”
“Danny–”
“Seriously—forget it. You go out with her. We’ll go on our trip and you stay in touch with her and ... whatever.”
“You’re pissed off now. You can’t let this affect you getting clean, Danny—it’s too important. It’s more important than anything. I’ll do anything you want about Zilia. But you can’t blow this off because you’re mad at me–”
“What? I’m not blowing nothing off. I’m not mad. Let’s get in the fucking van and head north.” He tossed a cigarette butt through the window of a wheelless sedan as they passed, ignoring a yell of irritation from inside.
They walked on, Candle was thinking about what Danny had said ... and how he’d said it: I’m not blowing nothing off. And knowing that Danny lapsed into white-trash diction when he was angry.
“That ... shit, I mean ...” Pup sighed. He wasn’t so good at talking to women. “That was good. I hope it was ... well, I hope you had a good time ...”
The girl—actually she was not so girlish, she was thirty-two or so—turned him a cheerful, practiced smile as she pulled on her high heels: a blond, tanned, naturally-bosomy, perfect-bodied, long-legged, blue-eyed woman with pearly pink fingernails. She was almost finished putting on her blue designer-label dress, no whore’s dress but something a woman exec would wear on a legit date.
Pup Benson himself was in shorts and a bathrobe, standing by the hotel window, overlooking the beach at Santa Monica. The gray sea was spitting up in slow motion outside, like a drunk on a bad morning.
But it was a pretty good morning, he thought; the girl had stayed all night with him. He knew this had cost about seven thousand WD. She was no ordinary pro. He was in awe of spending that much money on a night with a ... technically she was a prostitute. But she was so pretty, so pleasant, in a detached kind of way, so professional, so expert, that he couldn’t compare her to the “thugs in skirts” he’d paid for previously; couldn’t think of her as a whore. She was Janice. Just pretty long-legged Janice. He could smell her skin, her perfume, on his mouth.
The Multisemblant had paid for her. Had sent him here “on an errand” and he’d found her waiting, and she’d explained that “The Multisemblant Company” had paid for her services, and during the night he’d finally gotten her to say how much.
He was going to transfer another thousand to her as a tip, make her happy to come back. They’d talked some, had sex twice, then talked about football, and watched a movie, and they’d eaten a late night snack together.
A late night snack. Together. That’d been heaven.
She kissed him on the cheek and took the transfer card he’d printed out for her and gave him a slightly-lingering kiss on the lips and gave him her phone number and ...
She left him there in a glow of happy fatigue.
And he knew that the Multisemblant was manipulating him. And he knew it was working—and that he would do anything to please it, now.
Anything. Even those things it wanted him to do, that he’d been resisting. Those things that scared him to think about.
CHAPTER TWELVE,
HUNTS LIKE A FLYIN’ GUN, IT’S COMIN’ AFTER YOU, AIN’T THE LAST ONE
They were in a bar, Candle and his brother, in Borderbust, early evening, eating pineapple-glazed pig’s ribs and drinking rum concoctions. A Hawaiian Filipino Japanese Texican bar. Or so it seemed, looking at the bar menu and the décor. Lots of bamboo; a Shinto shrine; some black velvet paintings of naked girls in sombreros. Drinks in half coconuts. Black-Asian-Aztec lady bartender, down at the other end laughing with a Chinese businessman; the bartender in a glittery haltertop with boobs so enhanced they challenged conventional notions of physics.
Danny yawned, drooping over the bar.
“What a fag palace,” Danny muttered, taking no notice of the bartender, who was clearly not a lure for gays. “Fucking coconuts.”
“I ain’t fucking any coconuts,” Candle said, having had several rum drinks already this evening.
“But the jukebox is okay.” There was a twentieth-century bluesy rock recording on the old fashioned jukebox, a slow slinky-sleazy cut that Danny had selected, with the Stooges singing, “I woke up this mornin’ and I was flat on my ass ... she looked into my pin-point eyes ...” Danny softly singing along. “‘Looked into my pin ... point ... eyes ... ’”
“Didn’t know you went that retro,” Candle said, as the song ended. “You write any new songs lately?” A syrupy R&B-Mexican love song came on, a sad girl singing about fractures in her corazon.
Danny shrugged, otherwise not acknowl
edging the question. “I always wanted to open a bar, when I got some royalties in. I wanted to call it ...” He put his hand on the sticky bar. “‘Sticky Surfaces.’”
Candle laughed. “Good name. Hey—I’ve got a little money socked away. We can raise some more. I was thinking of hiring out to ... well there are some companies in competition with Grist ... a couple left ... they wouldn’t mind annoying him by hiring me. We could go in on a bar together ... Maybe in, like, Austin. Nightclub magnet for sinkitties. Take me some time to save up the money but we could live simple for awhile–”
“Yeah well. Why wait that long?” Danny glanced around, looking for drones, bird’s eyes, whatever. Leaned closer to Candle. “I got some software. From Maeterling ...”
“Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” Candle said.
“No hode, listen—the wanx had more’n one hack going. Stole an in-house program that shows when you’re talking to a semblant. They don’t want it around. Could be sold on the black market, make millions overnight.”
“Danny ...”
“I’m just saying. You know lots of people. That Gustafson wanx. Lotta people. Even Clive the Hive. Do it through him. We could set up a source, sell a million overnight, transfer the money under a good noise flogger, transfer it two, three, four times more, do an account isolation, the whole fucking bang-up, right?”
The Beta Band was playing on the jukebox. How many decades old was that song?
“Danny ... no. We’re gonna get legal. I’m going to use my contacts to get us legal again. We’ll even get on the right side of Grist. I’ll pick my time and cut a deal—from a safe distance. You do that, you’re going up against him. He’ll find out, use all his connections to take you down, and me with you.”
“‘Me with you’ he says. Hey man—what’d you do to me when you came to that club? You were mixed up in the Black Stock Market, you had flying guns shooting at your ass, somebody was killed on your watch, and you had to run like a fucking bunny rabbit.” Danny snorted. Sucked at his drink. Shook his head. “Talk to me about taking you down? I was running from cops with you and we had thug flesh chasing us down and—those birdseyes, man, they were looking for you, not for me. And you got me caught up in that and you say ...” He shook his head. “Fuck that.”
Candle took a long breath, and let it out slow. “You’re right. But the fact is, bro—you’re still better off with me than on your own. I hadn’t come around and got you at that club, we’d have found you dead in a VR web. In those fucking webs ... like Jackson. Remember ol’ Jackson, from Alameda? Found him starved to death, hooked in to a first-person-shooter VR ... totally thought he was actually in the Vietnam war trying to survive in the jungle ... Weeks on that thing ...”
“Yeah well, I ain’t Jackson, hodey, I’ve never spent more than ... well not very long. What you got me here in this fag palace for anyway? We’re too exposed here.”
“It’s not a ... never mind. We’re waiting for Zilia here.”
“For Zilia.” He went very still, sitting there on his barstool.
“She’s arranging a freighter for us. We’re going up North to Clive’s, spend a day or two getting our shitter out of shatter. Then we’re going up the coast. I’m gonna do some negotiating ... You’ll see. I’ve got it wired.”
“Yeah.” Danny grimaced. “What makes you think I want to see you and Zilia billing and cooing and shit?”
“I told you, I’ll stand away from her. But we need allies, Danny. And she and Clive, they’re allies. They’re helping us with cover. And you know what—all this drama keeps you busy, man. Anything is better than ...”
“And you don’t want to do a deal with that software?”
“I want you to give it to me, if you’ve got it loaded or whatever. We’re gonna dispose of it together, right into a recycle melter, and move on. We got enough problems.” He lowered his voice. “That software could get us both killed. Where is it? You got it on a stick or ...?”
“It’s ... in an antique ... where I was living. I could get it and meet you back here ...”
“No, you don’t leave my sight except to piss and you’d better do that close by. Zilia will be here any minute, you don’t want to put her at risk with a deal like that. We can leave it where it is, forget about it.”
“Zilia, huh.” Danny stood up. “I’m going to piss, man. I’ll think about all this. Get me another drink.”
“Sure. Same thing?”
Danny didn’t answer, just walked toward the men’s room at the back. Candle ordered a drink. Got a message from Zilia on the blueglove: BE THERE SOON IS HE OK
He responded, HE’S OK BUT NOT TAKING US WELL
Then Candle noticed that Danny had taken his satchel with him to the men’s room.
He jumped up from his stool and ran to the men’s room ...
And found it empty. Past the bathroom was a back door to an alley—standing open. He figured Danny had gone through it.
Two minutes later, walking around the dusky block hoping to get a glimpse of Danny, Candle got a blueglove text message from him: DON’T AMP OUT. JUST ONE MORE. WASN’T READY TO SEE HER YET. WILL COME BACK. MEET YOU THERE IN TWO HOURS.
Going back into the bar, Candle replied, FORGET IT GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE NOW THAT WAS A BITCH THING TO DO SNEAKING OUT GET SOME COJONES GET BACK HERE
No response.
The jukebox was playing Hank Williams. “Your Cheating Heart.”
Not quite time for Bill Hoffman’s dinner. He liked to relax before eating. And the patterns forming and falling away and re-forming on the digital walls of his DeStressing Room had been exactingly selected by a professional stress management decorator; they were based on a program called Rainforest: Peace Within Vibrant Life, the deep greens and tropical reds and burnished yellows and fertile browns almost forming definite forest shapes, but never quite. That would be too intrusive. According to the award-winning Japanese room-ambiance composer, Yomi—winner of the DeStress Design Award three years in a row—the program’s shapes and colors were all about speaking to “the nervous system in its own language, while sending soothing reverberations through the subconscious.” Hoffman was Yomi’s fan. Music, just as semi-formless, droned and hummed and whispered.
Hoffman was lounging on the smart-chair in his kimono, relaxing with his first Stolichnaya of the day, using the visualization he’d learned, picturing his inner state as a beautiful pond on which the waves got smaller and smaller and finally got still, and he felt only a minor tremor on the smooth surface of his inner pond when the woman with the bandaged face came in and sat on the cushioned, plush floor, at his feet. She wore a kimono too, scarlet with a gold heron taking flight embroidered on its back. A woman with a fetching body; soon she would have the bandages removed ...
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Any discomfort?”
“No, Mr. Hoffman, the medication is really quite effective.”
“Call me Bill. I hope I’ll be more to you, in time, than an employer.”
He could make out her smile despite the bandages; could see it in her eyes. “You already are, Bill.”
He chuckled. “I’m much older than you ...” Of course, he’d had his skin regrown and reapplied, had a new heart and liver, was having new lungs and adrenal glands grown custom from his own stem cells. He could afford to wear his age well. Joints were the tricky part, but there were procedures for that too. Leaving his hair white was another kind of vanity. It hinted of wisdom.
“You know, evidence mounts up that our old friend Terrence Grist has made up some kind of illicit semblant of me, and has used it—or someone has used it—to probe my finances. I really do believe he’s making a move against me.” Hoffman shook his head sadly. “It appears there’s something to class distinction after all. His father was nouveau riche and ... he’s all façade, when it comes to any kind of personal evolution, or culture. A bad role model. It’s not as if people don’t know.”
“They know,” she agreed. After a moment, more softly,
she added, “The police found Halido’s body on the beach today.”
“I didn’t know him. I do know the name. He was Grist security?”
“Yes. They’re saying he drowned himself.” She shook her head. “Everyone knows he’d displeased Terrence. And Terrence drops people in the ocean, you know. Amongst other things. He threatened me with it.”
He reached lazily out and she scooted closer, took his hand. “That’s deplorable my dear. It’s ... just like I said: déclassé. Well. Do you want a drink? It’s okay with your pain medication, I believe.”
“No thank you.”
“You must make yourself at home. You can stay as long as you like.”
“If I can be useful ... in any way. Besides just the obvious. I mean, that too. But if I can be useful against him ... I’d like that.”
“What were his great concerns when you were with him last?”
“He was working on some secret project with a man named Sykes. And then it all went bad, somehow. Something went missing.”
“You don’t know what? Or who Sykes was, exactly?”
“No. But it seemed ... like an obsession with him. Another obsession was Richard Candle. He was threatening people over this man Candle. Candle’s not really any threat to him. It’s not like Candle can prove Clarence stole money from the company.”
Hoffman chuckled. “You really did have your ears open! As for that little skim, Grist doesn’t even want people talking about it—he doesn’t want people to know that there was an internal audit, that his cash flow was frozen, that he stole the money to keep cash flowing. Even if Candle were to drop the whole thing completely, never talk about it ...”
She nodded. “That’s right. He’s refused to come in, refused to surrender to Grist’s people. Grist can’t bear the defiance, so ... he has to kill him.”
“I think he may be underestimating Richard Candle, from what I can find out. And I think he underestimated you, too.”