by John Shirley
And the Black Wind started to boil across the rooftop—like diabolically-possessed dry ice smoke, gritty black, seething just outside the hatch.
“Just lift off, emergency lift!” Hoffman shouted, shrilly. “This is the owner! Lift! Take us to the pre-set destination!”
The chopper seemed to grumble within itself but its rotors increased their spin and it lifted, front end first, tilting as it went up so that they had to hold onto their seat belts—Candle and Grist not even strapped in yet.
Up—and the Black Wind gushed in slow-motion under them, like a flood of vaporous syrup. Candle could smell it now: sulfites and benzene and monoxides and something like that stuff his dad had used on cockroaches. Raid.
“Oh God, that almost killed me,” Keek said, looking out the window. “You crazy, Mr. Grist.”
“Shut up you stupid little empty-headed bitch!” Grist snarled, trying to close his seat belt—both women glared at him.
Lisha was staring at him with her eyes wide, her lips moving. Saying something, to herself; something no one could hear ...
Struggling with his seat belt, Grist ignored them. The cabin was tilted in a way that made it hard for him to stay in place. “Dammit Hoffman why don’t you have smart seats in here?” His face was drawn with pain as he used his feet to hold himself in place on the chair.
And now the hatch was closing ... but slowly, like the grit in the air was interfering with it ...
“What’s wrong with that hatch?” Hoffman said, looking pale, as they lofted slowly up.
The erratic, vengeful wind that had blown the Black Wind inland now suddenly shifted—and the helicopter lurched, so that Grist was flung away from his unsteady grip, staggering toward the closing hatch.
Instinctively, Candle unsnapped his seat belt and grabbed for Grist.
But Lisha was already there, grabbing Grist ...
And shoving him out the half-closed hatch.
Grist shrieked, tumbling out the door. Turning, scrabbling—clutching frantically at the edge of the hatch ...
Candle gripped the sides of the doorway, looked out to see Grist hanging from the door’s lower edge, keeping it from closing. Dangling there, his teeth bared, eyes animalistic with fear.
Sixty feet below him, the slow-motion toxic deeps of the Black Wind churned ... Seemed almost to surge up hungrily, reaching for Grist.
Candle saw a movement in his peripheral vision, turned to see Lisha had taken a Cognac bottle from the chopper’s bar.
“Here’s your favorite Cognac, from Mr. Hoffman!” she yelled.
She threw it hard at Grist’s head. It struck him and he yelped and lost his hold and fell into the roiling blackness below ...
. . . into the waiting arms of the Black Wind. Grist vanished, screaming, in the black billow, in civilization’s toxic fantail ...
They flew south ... away from the Black Wind. Hoffman loaded the software into the chopper’s media-interface; they ran the VR clip and got the semblant’s whereabouts: a detail of the software that Grist and his people had forgotten about, a fillip, a little added engineering inserted by some forgotten programmer. Candle thinking, as they went: I probably could have acted faster. Saved Grist back there. Saved him for myself. But Lisha needed the satisfaction.
They found themselves in a flock of choppers and small planes and flying cars, a constellation of lights heading the same way; they flew over roads choked with evacuation traffic, emergency vehicles going the other way on the road shoulders. Smoke rising from malls where looters, taking advantage of evacuation hysteria, started fires to cover their thefts.
Hoffman put the news on the chopper cabin’s screen. “The Black Wind is already heading out to sea, again, dissipating as it goes ... do not return to the evacuated areas until notified ... The National Guard is moving against looters ... “
Programmed to head to the address lifted from software’s decrypter, the chopper veered West, and they came to a warehouse district. Old abandoned factories; new, quasilegal sweat shops. The area evacuated, though the Black Wind hadn’t come here.
“There’s the place ...” Hoffman said, pointing. “No place for landing.”
“There’s a dock—looks solid enough. Redirect it there,” Candle said.
They landed bumpily on a dock of concrete and allwall, bumpered at the water with thick pads of old truck tires. They got out and looked around as the rotors quieted. Felt a warm wind from the sea; smelled tar and brine. The asphalt access road between the dock and the old industrial buildings was deserted. A strange quiet hushed, after the clogged roads of the panicked evacuation, the flurry of aircraft. A few despairing brown palm trees stood together on a gray strip of beach near the dock, waving, tattered fronds making soft scratching sounds in the wind. “Nobody evac’ing down here?” Lisha asked.
Candle shook his head. “The Black Wind came from the sea so they’re going the other way. Keek, Lisha,” he added, holding the pistol down by his leg, pointing at the ground, “you can go. I saw a strip of restaurants, hotels, down about a quarter mile inland. You head down there, call a self-driver or something, go where you want. Hoffman—“
“Sure thing okay,” Keek said, hurrying away, almost running, clutching her purse. Wanting to get the hell away from them.
“I’m staying with him,” Lisha said, taking firm hold of Hoffman’s arm.
Hoffman frowned at her ... and the frown softened, and became a faint smile. He nodded resignedly. “I guess she will.”
“Better treat her right,” Candle said. “Or she’ll kick your ass out of a chopper into a cloud of poison gas.”
“That’s touching advice,” Hoffman said. “You should be a couples counselor.”
Candle said, “You got me here. I was thinking you’re top Slakon, you’re responsible. You should face this with me. But ...” He shrugged. “You can go.”
Hoffman grimaced. “I’d like to go. Truly. But I need to know. I need to see what happens in case I have to deal with this myself. Maybe I’ll be sorry. But I’m coming with you.”
Candle shrugged, checking the clip on his gun. “Don’t get in my way.”
Candle was aware that he was going into a certain state of mind. A state that Kenpo would call “identified with aggression, sense-heightened.” A state easy to lose control of.
Candle didn’t care. He was going with it.
Striding along buckled tarmac, by dusty mystercyke siding. Finding the address. An orange metal door that looked too small for the wall of the factory space. Thinking that it was odd that the Multisemblant hadn’t blotted out the address of transmission, covered its tracks ...
Then he saw that the door was standing open.
“Okay,” Candle said.
He stalked through the door, gun raised, Hoffman and Lisha following more slowly ... Footsteps echoing in a concrete floored space, big and shadowy, mostly empty, just three objects caught the eye, in a cone of light in the midst of the room. Candle paused to take it all in.
A big server rack, in the middle of the room, about sixty feet away, with a table shoved up against it, equipment on the table, including a multisided plate that emanated a holographic image of a head, a man’s head—or maybe not a man, or maybe a man and woman, combined.
The face from the VR clip. The Multisemblant. And it was looking right at him, with a broad smile, as if delighted to see an old friend. Other devices wired to the plate. And to either side were wheeled self-operating dull-yellow tractor-like units from some construction site. They looked to him like forklifts—they were about as big as forklifts—but instead of the forks they had jointed metal arms. One had a kind of big metal punch on its arm; the other a tube with complicated wiring. A spiker and a laser.
Each had an orange light on it, lit up; they were both idling. Operating. They hummed ... waiting.
Candle was aware, too, that there was someone off to his left, in the shadows of the farther corner. Leaning on the wall there. Someone male. Someone who had killed not
long ago. Candle didn’t know how he knew that. But he knew it. He was in a very intense state of being. He was humming, waiting, like the spiker and the laser. He felt Danny’s death stored inside him, like a tank of dark fuel waiting for the spark.
“I thought I should leave a little trail, a bit of string for you, and Hoffman and Grist to follow,” the Multisemblant said. The voice, almost one voice but reverbing slightly with others, coming from a small speaker, in perfect accord with the mouth on the hologram. “And here you are. Tying up loose ends, bringing to completion, concluding unfinished business. And imminently, Slakon will become Destiny, Incorporated. Oh, Pup! Let’s just see if you’re as proficient as you said you were ... Pup is so proud—he has something new we took from Claire. He’s been practicing.”
“Pup” stepped out of that dark corner, strode toward them. Candle had seen an exo-suit once before, used experimentally by the SWAT team. At least one had gone wrong on the front lines of battle, ended with a soldier flailing himself to death. But this guy, big wanx with a slack mouth, moved confidently into the light ...
“The fucking prison guard,” Candle said, recognizing him. “Benson.”
“I don’t work there any more,” Benson said matter-of-factly.
Suddenly Benson was leaping toward Candle—one second talking, a split second later in the air, coming down at Candle, making the exo-suit leap.
Candle dodged left, felt something graze his chest but the graze was so hard and fast and powerful he was flung back to skid across the floor, ten, twenty feet ...
“We had Targer out here, but not in this building—one not so far away,” the Multisemblant was saying, as Candle scrambled backward, getting his feet under him ... dazedly realizing he’d dropped the gun. “How I regret, how I wish, we’d had the suit when Targer was here. The ball peen hammer was classless, kitschy, déclassé ...” Its voice a bit like Hoffman’s just then.
Eyebrows arched almost comically, mouth in a rictus grin, Benson was stalking toward Candle again ...
Candle was looking for the gun. And for Hoffman—hoping he had picked up the gun.
But Hoffman and Lisha were nowhere to be seen. Spooked, gone.
There was a toolbox, over near the door, up against the wall, open. Maybe he could grab that ball peen the thing mentioned, or a crowbar ...
“Come on and wrestle, thugflesh!” Benson bellowed, coming at him, arms outstretched.
Candle started toward Benson—and suddenly changed direction, running toward the Multisemblant.
The nearer of the two yellow construction machines, the spiker, suddenly jerked into motion, wheeling toward him, like a pit bull startled into attack stance, and raised its metal arm, the big steel spike ... like a scorpion’s tail of steel, but a yard long ...
It rolled between him and the Multisemblant.
“I’ve got it remote controlled, of course, naturally, decididam-ente !” said the Multisemblant, as Candle dodged the spike, which nearly caught his left side with its sudden spiking jab, hissing a release of compressed air—and felt the burning wind of Benson’s exo-suit-enhanced fist passing close behind him.
Candle hunkered down, rolled on the floor once, fast as he could, got his feet under him and ran toward the door—toward the tool kit. Saw metal glinting beside it. Maybe a wrench? He scooped up the cool metal, heard a thump, spun in time to catch a back-hand smack from Benson—enhanced by the exo-suit. It was like being slammed by a two-by-four, and he spun through stars, clutching a familiar shape in steel—
A wall hit him in the back. That’s how it felt—like he’d been standing still and the wall came and hit him, hit him hard. He shook his head to clear it, tasting blood; found he was sitting, his back fetched up against an allwall panel.
He could see Benson standing a few strides from him ... silhouetted against the light over the Multisemblant.
Candle took a painful breath, and got to his feet. Shaky. But feeling the dark energy boiling up in him.
“And now, Pup ...” the Multisemblant began.
“Yeah, Destiny.” Benson said. “I hear you. I tear him apart, and the other two, and after today, I’m free, right?”
“Naw,” said Candle, getting a better grip on the gun. He’d only just realized, in all the flurry, what the metal thing on the floor he’d scooped up was. He cocked the gun, aimed it. “You’re free right now, man. I’m letting you out of prison.”
And as Benson poised to leap ...
Candle shot him right between the eyes.
Even before Benson’s body hit the floor, spasming from the charged bullet, the industrial welding laser was trundling toward Candle, tilting its jointed arm to aim the tube his way.
“Friend of mine operated one of those,” Candle said, backing toward the tool chest. “You got to get within like ten feet before they’re really an effective burn.” He shoved the gun in his belt, and sprinted around the machine. It didn’t change directions rapidly. He hustled up close behind its metal arm, reached down, pulled out the little remote-control box under the dashboard.
The portable laser ... stopped in its tracks.
The spiker was coming at him—Candle dodged it, ran up behind it, grabbed the remote box. Frozen machine.
“You have too much faith in machines—which figures,” Candle told the Multisemblant.
Candle grabbed a tool from the floor, walked over to the server, climbed onto it.
“There’s an old proverb,” said the Multisemblant in Bulwer’s voice. “Better to bend than to break. So let us do some Indian trading, let us negotiate, barter.”
Candle climbed onto the top of the big server rack. He poised up there a moment, hunched down a little, ball peen hammer out in one hand, the gun in the other ...
The Multisemblant hologram had turned around, was facing his way now. “I can simply, easily, fundamentally transfer myself, my essential—“
“No you can’t,” Hoffman called, from the doorway. He raised a fone into view, waved it. “Slakon Comm controls this area. Any major transmission out of here’s going to be blocked. Anything more than a file as big as a fingernail clipping—isn’t going ...”
“You look funny up there, Candle,” Lisha said, stepping into the doorway beside Hoffman.
“Thanks,” Candle said, beginning to hammer on the server. Slam, wham, clang on the cover of the server. Denting it, denting deeper, breaking through. Satisfying work.
“Tell you what,” the Multisemblant said, calmly and sweetly, in Claire’s voice. “I have access to a lot of money. I can transfer twenty million WD to any account you like ... Untraceable ... You can send it on to a lovely account in the Cayman islands ... Just stop that pounding, if you please ...”
Candle held off, for the moment. “Go on.”
“Now—here is what I propose,” said the Multisemblant. “I transfer the twenty million to you. You check to see it’s there. Then you turn me over to Hoffman. I’m an asset—a technological marvel. I control a great deal of his stock, too ... I’ve researched you, delved into you, done my homework on you, Candle. I believe that if you give a person your word, your word is good. If you give me your word you’ll turn me over intact to Hoffman ... I’ll transfer the money right now. I see that Bill here is right. I can’t transfer so large a file as my essential self—but I can wi-trans an order for a money transfer.”
“Multisemblant ... Destiny ... I give you my word. Here’s my account number ...”
In moments, it was done. Candle checked his balance. It was all there.
“That’s a lot of goddamn money,” he said. “And once it’s there, it’s there. And by God it seems to be there.”
He jumped off the server, walked around the gear, crossed to the laser. Found the manual on-switch. Got in the little seat. Drove it back toward the Multisemblant’s server.
“Your word, Candle,” The Multisemblant reminded him, purring in a woman’s voice now. Claire PointOne. “You don’t want to be like Gustafson—yes I know about that. You w
ant to have integrity. You are bound by ... what are you doing?” Its voice had become more like Alvarez’s now. This is ... it’s traicion!”
The portable industrial laser was now pulling up to the Multisemblant’s server ...
“I almost never give my word,” Candle said, musingly, moving the laser as close as possible to the server. “But I take it seriously because it’s the only thing my dad taught me. He taught me that and stuff like, ‘When producing a record or movie, don’t use your own money.’ Advice I never was in a position to use. But he also said, ‘Don’t give your word, because we ought to have some kind of fucking integrity or we’re, like, mosquitoes. So keep it back—and only give it when you mean it.’ Now that I took seriously. And he said, ‘I gave your mom my word I wouldn’t leave her and I stayed with her.’ That’s the only good thing he ever did—stayed with my mom. But then he died and she wandered off and it was just me and Danny ...” Candle experimented with the controls, managed to get the laser adjusted over the server hard drive. “But now Danny’s gone ... and whose fault is that?”
“But if your dad said give your word rarely and keep it when you do–” Grist’s voice now.
“I do keep it, when I actually give it,” Candle said. “When I give it to anyone. But you are not anyone. You are not even a you. I can’t give my word, for real, to a fucking semblant. To a program. You know what really annoys me? When people say they’re going to transfer their minds into a machine, like copy them into a machine so they won’t die. Those, what do they call them, singularity people. You know what? That’s still dying.”
He got out of the driver’s seat of the little machine and adjusted the arm of the laser by hand as he went on, “That’s not becoming a person—and that’s not a person in a machine either.” He was talking to keep the Multisemblant occupied. Unsure what it might be capable of. “That’s just a copy of the ‘outward signification’—that’s what Kenpo calls it—the outward signification of a person. The noise they put out. The signals they make. It’s all outward, hode. That’s not real. That’s the fantasy people have who don’t know who they really are. Or even what they are. And I’ll tell you something—a person is a human being—not a copy of a personality. Not a motherfucking goddamn semblant. And that’s all you are, multiple semblant or not—so fuck you. You goddamn Thing.”