by Tad Williams
CHAPTER 21
Handling Snakes
* * *
NETFEED/ART: Bigger X-Dead Genius, or Just Dead?
(visual: Coxwell Avenue death scene, Toronto)
VO: The art world is talking about the death of forced-involvement artist Bigger X, killed in a hit and run accident in Toronto, Canada. Already several camps have formed. Many believe X was responding to a "suicide challenge" by another artist known as No-1, and may have arranged his own fatal "accident" both as an acceptance of No-1's challenge and a further homage to a favorite artist of X's, TT Jensen. Others suggest that TT Jensen himself may have arranged the death, either out of irritation at Bigger X's constant citation of him, or (an even stranger alternative) as a symbol of gratitude for Bigger X's praise. Yet another group suggests that No-1 may have engineered the death out of frustration that Bigger X did not publicly respond to his "suicide challenge." There is even one brave group who suggest that X's death is just what it seems-something that happens to people who walk into a busy street without looking. . . .
* * *
She had been staring at the wallscreen so long that she had fallen into a kind of dream. When the shouting began, she sat up so quickly she almost fell off her chair.
Dulcie darted a reflexive glance at the coma bed, but Dread had not moved. He had been back online for most of a day. She was beginning to feel like she was keeping a deathwatch.
Someone screamed in the street below, a shrill but still masculine cry of pain and outrage. Dulcie walked across the loft, legs tingling because she had been in one place too long, and lifted the corner of the blackout curtain on one of the windows.
It was dark outside, which startled her almost as much as the noises had—how had it become night again so quickly? People were moving in the alley below, shadowed bodies performing an aggressive posture-dance. It was a fight of sorts, three or four young men strutting and shoving, but there seemed to be more arguing than actual attacking. Dulcie had spent too many years in Manhattan to be either surprised or concerned, and she certainly wasn't going to waste any time worrying that they might hurt each other.
Men. They're programmed for it, aren't they? Like those little builder robots. Just walk forward until you bump into something, then shove it until it does what you want—unless it shoves harder than you do.
She wandered back across the loft toward the cabinet where, in a fit of bored domesticity while waiting for some of her security-cracking gear to work, she had set a chair and arranged all the squeeze packs, sweeteners, and other related objects into a sort of coffee-break area. As the argument raged on in the alley below she became conscious for the first time that she had no idea what kind of security Dread had in this place. She couldn't imagine him leaving himself open to robbery or assault, especially in a neighborhood as troubled as this one, but she also knew he was highly unlikely to have any of the more common deterrents like an alarm system connected to the private-subscription police lines: Dread was obviously not the kind of man who would be calling the police. She couldn't picture him waiting for a private security firm to come save him either, or even men he had personally assembled, like the ones from the Isla de Santuario invasion. In fact, she just couldn't imagine him waiting for anyone. Dread was the type who would want to handle everything himself.
Yeah, and fat lot of good that will do me if he's off in Never-Never Land somewhere when the rude boys come through the window.
Another shout, a sputtering curse that seemed to come from right under the window, made her flinch. By the time you could wake him up, she thought, someone might have already stuck a knife in you, Anwin. She put down her coffee and walked to the room Dread had given her, then dropped to her knees and pulled her suitcase and attache out from under the bed.
As she located and removed the various plastic components, some molded to blend into the corners and roller-wheels of the suitcase, others disguised as ordinary pieces of executive traveling equipment—a set of pens, an alarm clock for those exotic locales where you were occasionally denied net access, a purse-size curling iron—she considered her strange up-and-down relationship with her employer. He had made it pretty clear now that he was physically interested in her, and she had to admit that he in turn was pretty interesting himself. He had come up from his last session in the network bubbling with delight, and she had been surprised to find herself feeding off his mood, hurrying to tell him of her successes with Jongleur's personal files. He had praised her, laughing at her excitement, almost vibrating with that strange hyperactive glee that filled him sometimes, and for a moment she had wanted to have him right then, quick and nasty as something out of one of the paper-book potboilers her mother had left lying around the house in lieu of discussing the boring details of sex and love with her only child.
But although they had moved around the huge room in a kind of hyperkinetic dance, Dread shouting questions at her as he made himself coffee and banged in and out of the shower, her timing was bad: at that moment he seemed completely uninterested in her, at least sexually, sharing the joy of her success and his own upbeat mood, but only as her collaborator.
He had been pleased, though, and that was certainly something. For the first time since she had come to Sydney she had made her value unmistakable. He had told her as he stood with his black hair lank and gleaming from the shower, his robe carelessly open down to his tight stomach muscles, that Dulcie's work would give him the last tools he needed for his big strike.
She paused, absently contemplating the scatter of small plastic parts now lying on the discount-store rug beside The bed. What was his big strike, anyway? He seemed to have gained control of his employer's VR network, which was certainly impressive, and might even be in and of itself enough to make him wealthy, although it was hard to imagine quite how that would work. Would he continue the Grail Project, selling the prospect of immortality to wealthy people, but with himself taking the tolls instead of Felix Jongleur? Or, more likely, was he planning to sell his employer's secrets off to the highest bidder? Where was Jongleur, anyway? Had Dread arranged the same fate for him that he had for Bolivar Atasco? Then why hadn't anyone heard about it? Surely if one of the world's richest, most influential men had died at least a rumor of it would have made the newsnets by now.
Dulcie took the tube from the curling iron and screwed it into the case of the travel clock, working slowly through the unfamiliar design. She almost hadn't brought a gun with her—the dreams about Cartagena were still strong—but the ingrained habits of a professional woman, especially in her particular profession, were hard to shake. The gun she had used on the gearhead in Colombia had never left that country, of course: Dread had volunteered to dispose of it for her, but she had read and watched enough thrillers to know she wasn't going to give anyone incriminating evidence against herself. She had disassembled it, wiped it as forensically clean as she could with nail-polish remover, and dropped the pieces in a dozen different trash cans across downtown Cartagena.
So you wouldn't trust him not to blackmail you with a murder weapon, but you'd sleep with him? Interesting selection process, Anwin.
It was so hard to figure out how she felt. He was mercurial, of course, never the same from moment to moment, but wasn't that what she wanted? She had discovered a long time ago that advertising copywriters from Long Island and stockbrokers thrilled to be under warranty on their first armored Benz didn't make her heart go pitty-pat.
Face it, Anwin. You do like bad boys.
And even more, she liked knowing that she herself was at least as wicked, just more discreet. But when you moved out to the fringe neighborhoods of sex, more than the scenery changed. You got . . . well, a weirder selection.
Jesus, Dulcie, so you have a fling with him and it doesn't work out. So you go back to New York and spend a couple of days drinking and watching netsoaps and feeling sorry for yourself—worse things could happen. Do you really think he's long-term material anyway?
She had to admit th
at she couldn't imagine herself living in the same city with the guy for any stretch of time, let alone picking out curtains together. But was that so bad? He excited her. She thought about him all the time, alternating between fascination and, occasionally, something much stronger and more dangerous than irritation or dislike, something closer to hatred and fear.
So what? He's what you want—a bad one. He's just badder than most, and that scares you. But you can't walk the high wire and still use a net or there's no point in the high wire at all, is there? So his social skills are a little alien. The guy's an international criminal. At least he isn't boring.
Her hands had been moving reflexively, but it didn't matter: despite the differences from model to model, once you'd put together a few of these plastic stealth guns you could pretty much do it in your sleep. She got up off her knees and sat on the bed, shaking ceramic bullets out of a vitamin bottle and slotting them into the magazine. Click, click, click . . . like little babies, octuplets, being packed into a shared cradle. Babies, guns, virtual worlds, old men pretending to be Egyptian gods—her brain, she reflected, was definitely scrambled.
You need a vacation, Anwin. A long one.
She considered for a moment, then walked back to the main room of the loft. The loud argument outside was over; a peek through the window showed the alley was empty. She put the gun in the middle shelf of the coffee cabinet, under some napkins.
Or maybe I need something exciting to happen. Something big.
Christabel stood holding the glass in one hand. Her other hand was on the faucet but she didn't dare turn it on, even though she was so thirsty she was about to cry. She was angry at herself for being thirsty, angry at herself for getting out of bed to get a drink of water. Now she had to stand like a scared mouse in the dark bathroom and hear her mother and father having an argument in the next room.
". . . It's gone far enough, Mike. I can't make you come back with me, but I'm certainly not going to stay here with Christabel, put her in danger, while all this is going on. We'll be perfectly safe at my mother's."
"Jesus H. Christ, Kay!" Daddy's voice was so loud and full of hurt that Christabel almost dropped the glass to smash on the hard bathroom floor. "Haven't you been paying attention to what's going on here?"
"I certainly have. And anyone with an inch of sense would know it's no place for a little girl. Mike, you let someone point a gun at her! At our daughter!"
For a long moment no one said anything. Christabel, who had been about to set the glass down so her arm would stop aching, stayed just where she was, like she was in a terrible game of Freeze Tag.
Her daddy's voice, when it came, was quiet and scary. She had never heard him sound mad in quite that way before—it made her want to run away. "That's about the worst thing you've ever said to me, you know? Do you think I haven't had nightmares about that every night? I didn't take her in to meet Ramsey. You let her go off to find a bathroom by herself. What was I supposed to do?"
"I'm sorry. It was an unfair thing to say." Her mommy was still mad, too. "But I'm terrified, Mike. I'm . . . there isn't even a word for how I feel. I just want to take my little girl and get out of here, and I'm going to. I'm taking the boy, too. Just because he's poor doesn't mean he's any less of a child and doesn't deserve protecting."
"Kaylene, will you listen to me? If I thought there was anywhere safer for you to be, I'd be the first one to send you both there—for God's sake, you have to believe that! But I'm only here right now because Yacoubian thought he could get away with using some of the ordinary base personnel. If it hadn't been Ron who picked me up, you would never have heard of me again. There's no doubt in my mind."
"This is supposed to make me feel better?"
"No! But however much of Sellars' story is true, I can tell you this—the way they took me, that whole thing the general was up to, it stank. There was nothing regulation about that at all—it was a kidnapping. Ron and Ramsey saved my life, just by being there."
"So?"
"So what if these people come looking for me again? Without bothering with the appearances of military law, this time—at night, maybe, disguised as burglars. Don't you think my wife's mother's place is somewhere they might look? And if I'm not there, don't you think that they might figure you and Christabel would make useful hostages? These aren't Boy Scouts. What's your mom going to do, sic the cat on them? Call that goddamn mobile home park committee she's always sending after the kids on skim-boards?"
"All right, Mike. It's not very funny."
"No, it's not. You were right before, Kay—it's terrifying. At least if I have you two near me I can protect you. We can keep moving, and Sellars seems to be pretty good with managing a low profile for us. You settle in one place, even somewhere not as obvious as your mom's, we'd just be hoping they don't find you."
"You sound like you believe in this . . . conspiracy. This whole big crazy thing."
"Don't you? Explain Sellars, then. Explain Yacoubian and his little hotel room and his matching Nazi weight-lifter bodyguards."
Christabel had been stiff in one place so long that she was afraid she would scream if she couldn't put the glass down. She inched her arm to the edge of the sink, looking for a flat spot.
"I can't explain it, Mike, and I don't want to try. I just want my child safe and away from all this . . . craziness."
"That's what I want, too, as soon as possible. But the only way I can see. . . ."
The glass teetered, then tipped. Christabel grabbed at it but it jumped out of her fingers and hit the floor with a sound like something blowing up on the net. An instant later the bathroom light flashed on bright, and her father was so big and angry in the door that Christabel took a bad step back and started to fall. Her father jumped forward and caught her arm so hard she squeaked, but she didn't fall down.
"Oh, my God, what are you doing? Ah! Jesus! There's glass everywhere!"
"Mike, what's going on?"
"Christabel just broke a glass. I got a piece in my foot the size of a steak knife. Jesus!"
"Honey, what happened?" Her mom lifted her up and carried her into the room where her parents had been arguing. "Did you have a bad dream?"
"I'll just clean up the glass, then," her father said from the bathroom. "And amputate my foot to save the leg. Don't mind me." He sounded angry, but Christabel relaxed a little—it wasn't the kind if divorce-angry she had been hearing.
"I . . . I was thirsty. Then I heard you. . . ." She didn't want to say it, but she still believed a little that if she told Mommy, something would happen to make things all right again. "I heard you arguing and it scared me."
"Oh, honey, of course." Her mother pulled her close and kissed her head. "Of course. But it's okay. Your daddy and I are just trying to decide what to do. Sometimes grownups argue."
"And then they get a divorce."
"Is that what's worrying you? Oh, sweetie, don't take it so seriously. It's just an argument." But her mother's voice still sounded funny and raw, and she didn't say, "Your daddy and I will never ever get a divorce." Christabel leaned into her and held on, wishing she had never been thirsty.
They were still talking in the other room, but much more quietly now. Christabel lay in her bed, just across a space like a little valley from the boy Cho-Cho, who was tangled up in his covers on his own bed like an Egyptian mummy. Christabel tried to breathe slowly like her mommy told her, but she kept feeling the crying about to come out and her breaths sounded all raggedy.
"Shut up, mu'chita." Cho-Cho's voice was muffled by his pillow, which lay over his face. "People tryin' to sleep."
She ignored him. What did he know? He didn't have a mommy and daddy who were arguing and were going to get a divorce. It wasn't his fault everyone was angry, like it was hers. Even though she was so sad it hurt, she also felt a little brave.
"This far crash," Cho-Cho said, rolling out of bed and taking most of his covers with him, so the sheeted mattress suddenly was bare and white, like an ice crea
m sandwich with the top peeled off. "Can't nobody sleep with this mierda." Skinny in his T-shirt and underwear when the blankets fell away, he walked toward the bathroom.
"Where are you going? You can't go in there."
He didn't bother to look at her and didn't even close the door. Christabel buried her head under her own blankets when he started to pee. After the noisy flush of the toilet, it was quiet for a long time. When she at last stuck her head out from under the covers he was sitting up in his bed, staring at her with his big dark eyes.
"You afraid some monsters gonna come get you, something?"
Christabel had met a real monster, a smiling man in a hotel room with eyes like little nails. She didn't need to answer to this mean boy.
"Just go to sleep," he said after a while. "Got nothing to worry about."
It was so unfair she couldn't keep quiet any more. "You don't know about anything!"
"I know nothing happens to little ricas like you." He stared at her, smiling a mean little smile, but he didn't look happy. "What you think gonna happen? I tell you what's gonna happen to me, you wanna know that? When all this over, you gonna go back to some mamapapa house somewhere, little Cho-Cho's going to work camp. See, your daddy, he one of the nice ones. Los otros, man, they maybe just take me out and shoot me."
"What kind of camp?" It didn't sound that bad—Christabel's friend Ophelia had been to Bluebird camp, and they made art projects and ate marshmallow sandwiches.
Cho-Cho waved his hand at her. "Cross City, that was one they put my tio in. Digging and like that. Bread with, like, little bichos cooked right in it."
Christabel put a hand to her mouth. "You said a bad word."