Black Glass

by John Shirley

  Bent over from the waist, she struggled to control the suit ...

  Thought she felt it responding, now, to her impulses. Maybe she could ...

  “No, that’s not going to work Claire,” said the voice, now phasing to a chorus again. “Pup? Introduce the lady to a silicon embrace, if you please.”

  “Yes, Destiny,” said the man’s voice, behind her.

  Claire screamed something about giving him anything he wanted, if only he would ...

  But then she was rushing, bent over, headfirst toward the glass wall—the exo-suit rushing her toward the glass—and she struck it with the crown of her head, a blow which didn’t quite knock her out ... Didn’t quite break her skull open ...

  “Oh dear,” said the chorused voice in the intercom. “It appears there won’t be a Claire PointTwo ...”

  And the exo-suit backed up, and rushed again. And this time ...

  But she didn’t even feel it. The last thing she felt was a transparent wall of nothingness.

  Candle caught up with Hoffman and Lisha and the bodyguard on Hoffman’s chopper pad—all three of them walking toward the chopper with their backs to him. Candle never saw the bodyguard’s face. Just thugflesh in a sweatshirt hoody. He hit thugflesh in the back of the head, hard, with the butt of his gun, hard enough to concuss the man, and the big guy went to his knees ... wavered there limply a moment ... then flopped forward.

  And Candle was now pointing his gun at Hoffman’s startled face.

  “Come back in,” Candle shouted, over the noise of the whipping rotors—glancing into the chopper. No pilot. Self-driving. Good. One less flunky to deal with.

  They went back inside—Hoffman and Lisha dragging the bodyguard in by his ankles, face down. Candle had him bound, inside, with the cuffs he’d brought; and the doors sealed. There was a good chance this place was well sealed enough to protect it from the Black Wind. That’s how it was for the wealthy.

  But maybe not. Maybe they were all going to die here—amid the luxury of one of the most expensive penthouses in North America ...

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN’S

  THE END, NO ILLUSION—SLAM THIS FUCKER RIGHT TO A CONCLUSION

  “Do you know what’s going on in this city tonight?” Hoffman demanded.

  “I do,” Candle said, directing them with his gun toward the big soft-looking flat-black sofa under the abstract painting, silver-blue and black, filling most of the wall. “But they say the Black Wind probably won’t go this far inland. And if it does—we’ll get somewhere safe. We could fly above it. I understand it settles low over land. I’ve got your flying car in the garage—that’s how I got in, before you ask. You’ve got your garage door set to open for it automatically. I just flew right into your house. Now—here’s what it is ... I need Lisha’s help.” Candle paused, looking mildly as he could at Hoffman and Lisha, both sitting grim-faced on the smart sofa. The sofa had re-formed itself to nestle them—but they didn’t look comfortable. They were looking at a dangerous man holding a pistol on them. He saw Hoffman glance past him at the door to the hall—saw the disappointment on his face. Candle nodded. “You just remembered you told all your people to evacuate? That’s right—there was just you and the one bodyguard left. You’re gonna have to deal with me yourself, Hoffman.”

  “What do you mean, you need my help?” Lisha asked. A soft, breathy voice. An attractive, cool-eyed woman, with a little dimple in her chin.

  “I’m going after Terrence Grist. I have reason to believe Lisha can get me into Grist’s place. Since you used to live there, not long ago. Well ... he’s probably left the place already—but maybe not. Maybe if we get out of here right now we might catch him before he evacs. I just wanted to get your big thugflesh friend here inside. I’ve got nothing against him—and if the Black Wind comes—“ He shrugged. “I hope this place’ll protect him. But we’re going back out to that chopper, right the fuck now, and you’re giving it new directions ...”

  “I was counting on you shaking Grist up, keeping him distracted,” Hoffman said. “That’s why I made sure you got out of UnMinding safely ...”

  Candle nodded. “I thought maybe that was you. His main rival. The guy with the connections.”

  “But I didn’t expect you to go quite as far as breaking into his house.” Hoffman said. “I know he’s been crowding you, but ...”

  “I’m going after him because I figure Grist is the reason Danny died.”

  “I’m not so sure Grist’s the only reason your brother died,” Hoffman said, trying to sound as if he were calm, and in control. But Candle could see his hands shaking, ever so slightly—and he saw Lisha take one of those hands between hers. “Anyway—he’s only part of it. My guess is, he didn’t have your brother killed. I’ve been following Grist’s recent activities. He sent some men to bring Danny Candle in. Your brother died as a result of a V-Ride accident—only it doesn’t seem to be an accident. It appears to be murder by Virtual Reality. There’s a file I obtained from a friend in the LAPD—images clipped from your brother’s last ... adventure. There’s something in that clip, copied from his neural transmit—and I think it identifies your real enemy. Mine too. Maybe we’re well met here. Maybe we can be allies.”

  “Can we watch this clip on the chopper?” Candle asked. Feeling a tightness in his throat. He was almost afraid to see it. “You set up for that?”

  “We can. I can call my home server and have it uploaded to the helicopter.”

  “Okay. But this allies stuff, this cute effort of yours to ease me into being another one of your housepets ...” Candle shook his head. “Not going to work. You’re doing what I tell you, all the way down the line, or I’ll put some holes in you, and watch you jump from the charges.”

  “Please! You’re Richard Candle,” Hoffman said, shaking his head with smiling reproach. “You’re a former cop. And a man of principle, according to the evaluation I read. I don’t think you’d shoot us.”

  Candle sighed. “I’d probably shoot away a few of your fingers, some toes. Shoot a hole in your shoulder—maybe another in your thigh, right next to your groin. These are charged bullets, they’ll make you flop around like a fish. Then I’d kick your ass black and blue. Maybe break a shin ... But you’re right: I probably wouldn’t actually kill you unless you tried to jump me. Wouldn’t have to, Mr. Hoffman.”

  Hoffman grunted, smiling ruefully. “I see. Let’s get this over with, then. I just hope you don’t kill us all—if the Black Wind comes ...”

  Four minutes later they were in the air, sitting across from one another in the snug little cabin, like a flying limo, but with a higher ceiling. Candle still gripping his gun as Hoffman ordered the VR clip uploaded to the chopper.

  Then getting a drink from a side bar for himself and Lisha, Hoffman said, “I think I should tell you what’s going on. Oh—care for a drink? No?”

  “Get right to the ‘tell me what’s going on’ part,” Candle said. The chopper pitched in the rising winds and his gut contracted; he didn’t feel much better here than in a flying car.

  “You should know who your real enemy is,” Hoffman said, sipping vodka. “I’d rather your hostility was directed in the proper direction.”

  “My real enemy? And who’s that?”

  “It’s a what’s that, really. Only a kind of who. Your enemy is an AI made up of five semblants. Only it’s not exactly an AI—it’s more like the worst parts of five people combined into one, copied digitally.”

  As the chopper lofted towards Grist’s place, Hoffman told him everything he’d found out from Sykes. And then, as they flew toward Grists’s, a sheet of nanoglass, on the mahogany and leather bulkhead of the luxury chopper, played the clip from Danny’s last V-ride ...

  Claire PointOne’s face was changing... a mesh of several other faces ... a phasing chorus of voices all saying the same thing, spoke from the imperfectly amalgamated features: “Boy, you are so brief, so temporary, and soon you will wink out ...”

  “Rack!” Danny sho
uted.

  They couldn’t see Danny—the VR image was from his point of view. But Candle could hear his voice and it cut him to the quick.

  Candle could feel Hoffman and Lisha watching him. Like they were staring into a wound in his chest. But he kept watching. . .

  The VR jungle whirling, blurring ... the image spinning like it was starting to go down a digital drain.

  And Danny’s voice:

  “Cut this bullshit off! Turn ‘er off! Switch out!”

  ... she hunkered over him, grabbed him by the throat, and then leapt into the air, and he felt himself lifted ... He fell into the tops of trees, dislodging a thousand bats that scratched at his eyes as they flapped past, ... And looked down to see the Columbian Guerrilla Fighter climbing the tree toward him ...

  “’Combat in Columbia’,” Candle said, wonderingly. “We all played it.” Watching as the murderous fantasy unfolded. As Danny fell from the tree ...

  “I didn’t play this adolescent game,” Hoffman said, unable to hide his disdain. “Or the other ones. Even as an adolescent.”

  “My dad had that game,” Lisha said.

  ... and the woman with the multiplex face faded in, simply appeared, floating in the air over him, like the Cheshire Cat.

  “Better run!” she crowed, her mouth stretching out unnaturally widely, “I can’t let you live much longer little Danny boy ... forever boyish, adolescent, unfinished. Yet you are aging ... aging rather badly! Well—that’ll be over soon! No more aging at all! I can’t have that software bandied about the world!”

  “That’s why they killed him?” Candled muttered. “Rigged the game and killed him ... to stop the semblant I.D.?”

  “Is that the software she’s talking about?” Hoffman asked.

  Candle didn’t answer. The clip was unfolding ...

  “It’s not real!” Danny shouted. But he turned and ran.

  Then he tripped over a rotting log and fell face first ...

  Candle could see Danny’s hand clutching the machete as he got to his feet.

  Turned—and there was a “Captain Guerilla.”

  “Fuck you and fuck the whole thing!”

  ... And then he rushed the AK47, swinging the machete.

  Candle smiled sadly. “’Fuck you and fuck the whole thing,’” he murmured. “That about sums up how he got where he ended up ...” Thinking: Danny’s last moments. Not so bad, really. Danny believed in that kind of reality. He knew he was dying—trapped there and dying. He fought back anyway. Not so bad at all. “Five semblants. I have the software. It could be used on this clip ... it identifies semblants. And sometimes tells you their IP.”

  Hoffman looked at him with a chill steadiness. “And where did you get this software?”

  “I’m proud to say, we stole it from you assholes.”

  “We could use your software, ID the Multisemblant ...” Hoffman said musingly, glancing out a window. “Find out where it is.” Now he was peering fixedly out the window. “We could go there. Confront our mutual enemy.”

  “Once we have Grist. He’s going with us.”

  “Grist? Look out that window!” Hoffman said. “I mean—just look. For God’s sake!”

  Candle snorted. “You have some idea you’re going to grab this gun when I look away?”

  Hoffman grimaced. “Do I look like a desperado? Hardly.”

  Lisha hid a giggle behind her hand. “Desperado.”

  Candle shrugged, got a good grip on his gun—and looked. He saw part of Los Angeles, below, sheathed in black, boiling fog rising up only about six stories from ground level ... The street lights dulled inside it, and getting more and more muted, as if it were killing them too. Strangling the electrical life out of the city.

  The front was moving toward them—but slowly. As if hesitating.

  “It’ll move forward, then it’ll stop,” Hoffman said. “That’s what it does. Like it wants to make sure it kills everything before it moves on. But it will move on again, Candle ... and Grist’s place is right in its path. And it rises up in waves as it goes—the wave’ll sweep up, likely swamp Grist’s place.”

  “Us, too,” Candle said. “Looks like we’re about there. Tell this thing to set down on that roof ... right next to the other chopper. You want to live, keep the engine idling. And be prepared to run back to it ...”

  “You’re not really going to make us go in with you ...”

  “You still have the door combinations, Lisha?” Candle asked.

  “If they still work.” She smiled, and her eyes went flat. “You know—I want to. I want to go in.” After a moment she added cheerfully, “Maybe I can watch him die.”

  Candle found Grist dozing in bed, next to a yawning girl who was lazily brushing her hair. The girl froze, brush in hand, as Candle kicked in the door. She threw the brush at him and scrambled away from Grist—getting out of the firing line. Grist looked up, blinking sleepily, muttering, “Thought I gave orders wasn’t to be ...” He broke off, staring. “Candle!” Suddenly wide awake.

  “Better put some clothes on.” Candle pointed his pistol meaningfully at Grist. “You don’t want to die there, in bed. And we’ve got to get out of here fast. The Black Wind’s coming. And we’ve got an appointment with your Multisemblant.” He looked at the girl, a short, black-haired girl from the South Pacific, pulling on underwear, a tight flower-patterned dress. Her long-lashed dark eyes glinting with a flinty determination to survive, no matter what. “What’s your name?” Candle asked.

  “Keek,” she said.

  “You’ll be okay, Keek. Just run outside, to the chopper—the one with old Hoffman and the girl in front of it. We’ll take you out of here. Put on your shoes. Grab your purse. Okay good—now go on.”

  She didn’t hesitate.

  “Hoffman,” Grist said, pulling on his pants. Watching Candle closely. “That who you’re working with? Is Hoffman ‘Destiny’?”

  “Destiny how?”

  “A company called Destiny has been buying up Slakon stock.” He pulled on loafers, a golfing shirt. “Can’t find out much about it ...”

  “I’ve got a feeling we’re about to meet it. Now move—outside.”

  “Sure. But you are working with Hoffman—you and he stole the Multisemblant, or hired that halfwit to do it for you, yeah? Seeing as Hoffman is waiting politely for you outside ...”

  “He’s only waiting for me because I’ve got his chopper’s activator in my pocket. He’s my ‘guest’ same way you are. You ready? We haven’t got time for this.”

  “How’d you get in? You’re an impressive guy. Just when I think ...”

  “This isn’t the ‘I could use a man like you’ speech is it? Then a little farther down the road, I get a bullet in the back of the head?” Candle felt the banked rage flare up in him. It was hard to just stand there with Grist and not put a bullet in him. Watch him spasm for awhile with the charges. And then ... “I should just kill you right here ... I don’t know if my brother died on your orders. Hoffman thinks not. But wasn’t for you, Danny’d be alive.”

  “You’re supposed to take care of your own, last I knew,” Grist said, softly. Deliberately. Watching Candle’s face. “It was on your watch he died, from what I understand, Candle.”

  Candle raised the gun, cocked it ...

  “I’m going!” Grist said, raising his hands, heading out the door.

  Candle stuck close behind Grist, and as he’d expected Grist tried to bolt once he reached the hallway.

  Some inner spring was coiled in Candle, waiting for this, and he leapt forward, his left hand grabbing Grist by the back of the shirt. The fabric tore as Grist tried to pull away, but he lost his footing, fell on his side. Kicking at Candle’s shin.

  Candle sidestepped the kick, stamped down hard on Grist’s foot, felt bones crack. Grist screamed. Candle circled him, Grist getting up, putting his weight on his intact foot—and Candle, unable to stop himself, punched Grist hard in the solar plexus with his left fist, feeling it drive up against t
he diaphragm.

  Grist buckled, wheezing and gasping for air, and Candle brought up his knee, cracked him on the chin, watched with satisfaction as blood splashed from a burst lip and Grist banged back against the wall. “And come to think of it,” Candle said harshly, “if it wasn’t for you pressing for it, Danny would’ve walked for lack of evidence, and I wouldn’t have had to do his time for him ... Four years UnMinded, thanks to you, Grist ... and then Danny ...”

  He stuck the gun muzzle up against Grist’s right eye ...

  “Candle!” It was Hoffman at the end of the hallway. “Come on—the Black Wind!”

  Candle drew a long unsteady breath and then shoved Grist down the hall toward Hoffman.

  Grist limping, hissing with pain at each step, they got out to the chopper pad—and paused for a shocked second to contemplate the onrushing wall of black ...

  Like a tsunami in slow motion, but made out of impenetrably dark smoke, rolling slowly, inexorably toward them, from a city block away.

  “Jesus fuck!” Grist burst out, seeing the Black Wind. “Why didn’t anyone ... the idiots! No sense of judgment! Okay, let’s go, let’s go!” His injured foot forgotten, he was hobbling toward the idling chopper, its blades lazily whipping overhead—idling but incapable of flying till Candle released its self-drive with the activator. Hoffman, Keek and Lisha were already inside.

  Looking at the Black Wind—already closer, rearing as if to slap down on them—Candle felt a scratchy choking feeling in his throat.

  He hoped Kenpo had gotten out. But Kenpo had survived a great deal, in his life. He and his wife would be well out of reach.

  I’m the one who was stupid enough to land a chopper right in front of that thing, Candle thought, climbing into the helicopter after Grist. Starting its waiting self-drive, pressing the tab on the activator in his left hand pocket.

  The chopper vibrated, roared. “The hatch is not closed ... Please close the entry hatch ...” said the helicopter. Candle looking to see how to close the hatch ... was it this button or ...