by John Shirley
The place was closed for the night, and patrolled by security robots: trundling man-sized metal and plastic cylinders with taser arms and direct wi to the police. As one of the police, formerly anyhow, Candle knew how the watch robots could be shut down; he had to spend some flow on an electromagnetic pulser, completely illegal; a metal sphere about the size of a softball. He tossed it over the razor-wired fence, heard it clatter. Heard a robot come to investigate the nose. Heard the pulser, set to start at thirty seconds, click and hum—and the robot rolling past the gate, on the other side, came to a stop, with a final diminishing disappointed-sounding humming noise. Bonus, the electronic lock on the back gate went down with the pulse, too, and the gate unlocked. He rolled the gate aside, ran into the garage yard, past a row of flying cars.
A silver BMW Flyer. That was Hoffman’s sky ride ...
There it was, inside the garage. A sleek compact Beamer still drying on a lift rack after being painted. He didn’t see any other silver Beamer flyers here.
How would he get it off the rack with the power in the shop fried? But he wouldn’t have to get the rack down, he realized—the car could fly.
Candle opened the garage door—had to do it manually, after the EMP—found the activator in the office in a locked cabinet he had to pry open. Found a step ladder, dragged it to the car, climbed up, got in, started it with the activator.
The flying car’s pleasant computer generated voice asked: did he want self-drive or manual?
Candle wanted self-drive. He had no idea how to drive a flying car.
He gave it the destination—“home.” He was afraid it had personal voice recognition, and wouldn’t accept his voice. But Hoffman had drivers, more than one, so it was set on “accept any voice.”
The car shivered, its underjets hissed, its Casimir-force levitators whined, and it lifted up off the rack, floated out the garage door, over the yard ... and into the night sky. Up. Up ...
His stomach lurching, Candle hoped they really had fixed this damned machine ...
He heard sirens, as the Beamer passed over an adjacent building. Figured the sirens for the police coming; some kind of warning had been sent to them when their contact with the service center went down.
Candle squinted at a read-out on the dash, telling him he was about five hundred feet up. His headlights pierced the haze ahead, revealing almost nothing; but a cubistic constellation of city lights spread out across the Hollywood hills. Candle sat back in the driver’s seat, clutching his knees. Stop being a Deezy. Made himself look through the window, down at the glimmering streets and floodlit rooftops. Grimacing. Nothing between him and the streets but air. He’d flown in jets countless times, but this ...
He noticed other flying cars and choppers lifting up, in the area. Surprised at how many seemed to be heading for the sky all at once. And all going the same direction too. Was something going on, something he hadn’t heard about?
Only four blocks and the flying car flattened its trajectory, then angled down toward Hoffman’s penthouse. Where he saw a commuter chopper warming up on the roof, with a Slakon logo on the side. Hoffman was planning to leave, by chopper. Him too? Seemed to be a lot of activity on the streets down there ...
On a hunch, Candle switched on the car’s iNews. Immediately, an emergency broadcast. “The Black Wind is not expected to hit Los Angeles for more than an hour and may not penetrate very far inland, but as these pollution-weather patterns are capricious we can make no definite predictions and we must again repeat the recommendation of an immediate but calm and orderly evacuation of the Los Angeles area ... Remember, you’ll only slow things down if you panic. Do not try to force your way in front of anyone else, follow all traffic rules ...”
So that was why Hoffman was leaving. What about Grist? Was he doing a panicky evacuation from his building in that big chopper of his? Was he running beyond Candle’s reach?
The girl was sweet. Grinding against her, in the gloomy, glossy cave of his bedroom, Grist almost liked her.
She hadn’t seemed to mind putting the mirror mask on, before they had sex this time. So he could have sex with her and see his face overtop hers. He reared over her, over his reflected face, listening to ambient music in the dimly lit room, inhaling the subtly drug-tinctured perfumed smoke rising from the Braun dope-fumer.
He needed this. To lock out the world for a time. Leave all the security to Damon. He had switched off all communications interfaces, this time—he didn’t usually go that far, but he had to ex out of the stress; had to be insulated completely from it. Had given definite, threatening orders he was not to be disturbed. Thought he had heard someone knock at the door, a little while ago, but he’d ignored them and they’d gone away ... Gone away ...
Grist sucked in the drugged air ... and drove himself into the girl ...
Yes. Sweet. Yielding, luscious—even welcoming, this girl. Never the faintest flicker of resentment for being a hireling. Just wanting to please him.
Grist almost felt close to her.
Claire PointOne was working out with the exo-suit and a robot sparring partner. She was using the suit to enhance her fighting moves on a thirty-foot-square patch of grass, a clearing amidst the ornamental cactus and boulders of her floodlit roofgarden, a few miles south of Long Beach. Behind her were the glass rooftop doors of her home, the top three floors of the CPO building. She was aware that L.A. had declared an Air Emergency but she had been informed it wouldn’t apply to Long Beach and the streets were thronged, up north, with frantic evacuees, not a good time to be on the highways. She’d never gotten comfortable in flying cars—the risk seemed absurd and there were so many FAA rules it was difficult to fly on any but strictly prescribed routes ... what was the point? And choppers took up so much room. Big ugly noise things.
Her place, anyway, could seal hermetically and her air filtration system was the best in the world. It even excluded nanoparticles. An alarm system that would tell her if the air nearby was dangerously compromised. There were other fail-safes. So she stayed here, working out on the roof garden ... She was a Libertarian and didn’t like to run with the rabble. It was all about freedom to live her way in her own little kingdom. Something she’d worked hard for, toiling in the corporate fields, struggling with patriarchal executive men and predatory women execs for twenty years. She had earned the right to do things her way. Later she’d have an escort from Prince Principalities, the best male escort service in California, take her to dinner. Get that Umberto again. Hot dresser but not overstated. No one ever knew he was an escort. So much simpler, so much more emotionally prudent than actually dating someone.
The robot sparring partner, looking almost exactly like a living crash test dummy, was squared off, doing a little footwork, circling her. It was capable of learning and it was wary after she’d given it a good smack with the exo-skeletal suit’s left jab.
The exo-suit she wore, flexing its own synthetic muscles, looked like tautly-sheathed quilted clothing, it wasn’t thick or heavy or intrusive, using smart-materials and cell-chips to communicate with the electrical firings of her muscles, following her impulses perfectly, clothing her from the neck down, gloving her hands.
The faceless robot was set to High Risk Impact—she’d had to sign a waver to get that setting—and it suddenly spun, kicked at her with its left “foot”, while spinning, perfectly balanced on its right foot.
Claire’s reflexes were good—she reacted fast, leaning back, catching the blow glancingly on her padded left arm, the exosuit both protecting her and enhancing her speed, her power. There were only a few like it around. They’d made some for the military; they were still being tested on the front lines of the latest war. (Where was that war? The name of the country slipped her mind.) Exoskeletal suits were controversial—there was a fear that if you somehow lost control of them ...
But this one responded beautifully. Claire danced back from the robot, making it think she was in defensive mode, then she rushed it, used a quick three-j
ab combination to drive it back. Feeling the enhanced power rippling along her limbs, a multiplication of Claire PointOne. And she was well-trained, formidable even without the exoskeleton.
She and the robot squared off again ...
And then she saw Alvarez staring at her from the other side of the grassy clearing.
He was wearing one of those light-colored snappy designer suits he favored, and he didn’t look happy. “Well?” he said. “I am summoned and I am here.”
“Sparring off,” Claire told the robot. It slumped like a marionette after the show.
She walked over to Alvarez, hands on her hips, feeling the springiness, the power imparted to her by the exosuit. “What the hell are you doing here and what the hell are you talking about?” she asked, without preliminaries. She was not pleased to find Alvarez here. They’d had a thing, once, and the parting had not been pleasant. He had tried to assert control over her. It was really quite offensive to contemplate.
“You are fighting a robot?” he asked. “You used to fight people.”
“Human sparring partners get tired too soon,” she said. “I need this time, Alvarez—I spend so much time programming, engineering, in negotiation, all those things are sedentary—and how did you get me on this? You didn’t answer my questions.”
“Because I don’t understand them,” Alvarez said, making a theatrically broad gesture of bafflement. “You summoned me here. You just now let me in. I saw you. Or your semblant—but if it let me in then you wanted it to. So ... que pasa?”
“What pasa, is that you’re out of your fucking mind,” Claire said. “I never called you, never let you in the building. I almost never use a semblant. I don’t trust them—Grist could have a Trojan in them somewhere reporting back to him. I got one for emergencies and it hasn’t come up yet. So ... what makes you think I called you?”
Another elaborate shrug. “You called me, I saw you on the screen saying a big emergency, you were weeping, I thought for old time’s sake ... well, I came. Then downstairs, I call up, there you were, on the screen, saying come upstairs. You opened the door.”
“I did nothing of the kind. This is some kind of hack, is what this is. Where’s my goddamn security?”
“They were leaving as I came up. Said you gave them directions to leave the building. You know there’s a general evacuation around L.A.? Well, I live only a mile from here, my California place, I was going to go to Mexico City but I thought, maybe, you want to go with me, in my little jet ...” He started to light a cigarette.
“No smoking, up here,” she told him.
“But we are out in the outdoors, no? Bueno, as you like. Do you want to come to Mexico City? Safer there. We could–”
“She won’t be going anywhere,” interrupted the stranger, coming into view next to the big overgrown prickly pear. He had a gun in a shoulder holster and something else, a device of some kind, held in his hands. He had both hands on it, was pointing the little metal box toward her now. A slovenly man, with two days of beard, a sickly smile on his broad face. “Oh, my name’s Benson,” he said. “I work for Destiny.”
“Terrorists!” Alvarez said, backing away, dropping his cigarette case.
“The doors are all locked, from within the security system,” Benson said. “Like the lady said, it’s a hack. Kinda sorta. That and something else. Anyhooski, here we go ...”
Claire was tensing herself to spring at him, counting on her suit to protect her and take this home invader down—when she felt the exoskeleton freeze in place.
That device in his hands ...
Benson grinned loopily. “You got it, lady. That’s right. I’ve taken over your little fightin’ exo-suit there. We worked it out—but hey really, the Multisemblant ... I mean, Destiny ... Destiny figured it all out ...”
“The Multisemblant,” she said, trying to regain control of the exo-suit. “I’ve heard rumors.”
“Call me Destiny—I promise you, it’s appropriate,” said the voice in the air.
“What was that!” Alvarez yelped. “That voice! Where is it coming from?”
Claire was struggling to control the exo-suit. “Suit, final override, switch off!” she ordered it. Not really expecting that to work—whoever went to the trouble to develop a remote control for this suit would’ve over ridden the voice commands. So it proved. It stayed frozen; wouldn’t turn off. And she still couldn’t move. So she answered Alvarez’s question. “It’s from the garden intercom,” Claire said. Surprisingly difficult to talk; her mouth so dry. “They’ve gotten into all the household systems. Someone’s transmitting their voice through the intercom. You need to try to get out of here and get the cops. Try your cell first ...”
“Your cells, skull fones, none of that stuff will work,” Benson said. “Don’t you think we covered that?”
“My bodyguards ...” Alvarez said, breaking off, staring toward the door into the roof garden.
“You told them to wait outside the building,” Benson said, chuckling. “So they’re waitin’ outside like good boys. Watching the skies for the Black Wind, probably. And if you do anything that worries me, I’ll pull this gun here and shoot you in the guts.”
Alvarez was breathing hard, licking his lips. Staring around wildly.
“Alvarez—don’t be a Deezy!” Claire snapped. “Go—get help!”
“He couldn’t get out anyway, I assure you, Claire,” said the voice from the intercom. A strange, phased, chorused voice—like more than one voice saying the same thing. “Now—let’s take it to the next level. Pup?”
“I’m issuin’ with it!” Benson said. Crowed it, really. And he tinkered with the little metal box in his hands and Claire found herself lurching forward, propelled by the exo-suit, toward Alvarez. Carried along by the suit. Her arms raising. Her gloved hands flexing.
“What ...?” Alvarez said, backing away.
“First, do Alvarez,” said the voice from the p.a.. “Then Yatsumi. When the Black Wind has abated, we will take care of Sykes, because he’s in the way and he’s a loose end ... Then Hoffman and dear old Grist ... And that voting block will be, for once, in agreement, at Slakon ...”
Claire tried to stop advancing toward Alvarez ... but the suit had a will of its own now, and it carried her along, and she couldn’t stop it.
Couldn’t stop it from seizing Alvarez by the neck. Couldn’t stop her gloved exo-controlled hands from squeezing, squeezing, till his tongue protruded and his face went swollen and black and his eyes popped and she screamed at the sight and shouted that she was sorry. But she could not look away ...
Even when with a peculiar twisting motion, left hand one way, the right another, the exo-suit twisted Alvarez’s head off his shoulders.
Blood spurted from his ragged neck, his body sagged, his head fell and bounced, gushing blood, eyes twitching, tongue distending, and she vomited; two kinds of fluid, one from him and one from her, in sickening complement.
“That’s another one down. I do like removing their heads. There’s something about it that’s so satisfying to me. It’s sort of like unplugging their hard drives from their power sources. And now, Claire, right behind you ...”
She was whipped about by the exo-suit, and was horrified to see Yatsumi walking toward her. “What was so important?” he asked, frowning, looking annoyed. “I was on the point of going back to Tokyo, I had everything ...” Yatsumi broke off, seeing Alvarez’s still pumping body. Stared. Made gagging sounds. “Oh ...” Said something in Japanese. Looked at Benson. Looked at the blood on her gloved hands. His mouth dropped open. He covered it with one hand and looked around for the way out ...
She had just time to scream, “Run! Yatsumi, run!”
And then the exosuit was running toward him. Taking her with it. Chasing him through the garden. He almost got to the glass doors ...
And did, in a way. She ... the exo-suit with Claire in it ... picked him up, and kept going, running toward the glass doors ... and smashed him through them.
&
nbsp; Smashed his head into them with tremendous force. They were supposed to resist breaking but the pane broke, probably the enormous momentum of the highly charged exo-suit, and his head shattered with the glass, and then she was running through the still-shattering jag-edged doorframe, a shard tearing her right cheek to the bone. She screamed—more of a squealing sound to her own ears, but the pain was unspeakable—as the suit paused in her living room, dropping Yatsumi’s dead, twitching, blood-gushing body on one of the most expensive carpets in the world, hand-made by happy little slave children in Pakistan ... She was aware of the man with the controller in the background, on the edge of her peripheral vision, to her left, controlling the exosuit ....
Then the suit turned and ran toward the glass wall on the left and smashed into it, and bounced off, and ran toward it again, smashing into it, bouncing off. Claire banging into it with each impact; her nose broke, she was spitting teeth.
And then it paused, bent over, as if bowing, aiming her head toward the glass. It was glass dialed to opacity; black glass. Much thicker glass than the doors that had smashed under Yatsumi’s impact.
“Oh no,” Claire said. “Suit ... final override! Suit!”
“That’s not going to work, Claire. You’re a systems person, surely you appreciate my thoroughness, my detail work, attention to detail?” came the mocking voice from the house intercom. Her own voice, the voice of Claire PointOne this time. “All your people discharged, your peers summoned, neatly tricked by your semblant into coming here—for I am your semblant, in fact. Yes your own semblant is the one who has done this to you! I wonder what that means? Human beings are always looking for meaning, connotation, import. How do you interpret that, Claire, eh?”