Twenty minutes later, having lost his remote and what cash he had left, Deke was striding past the broken soldiers of Best Buy.
“Now you let me tell you, boy,” Bobby Earl had said in a fatherly tone as, hand on shoulder, he led Deke back to the elevator. “You’re not going to win against a combat vet—you listening to me? I’m not even especially good, just an old grunt who was on hype fifteen, maybe twenty times. Ol’ Tiny, he was a pilot. Spent his entire enlistment hyped to the gills. He’s got membrane attenuation real bad . . . you ain’t never going to beat him.”
It was a cool night. But Deke burned with anger and humiliation.
“JESUS, THAT’S CRUDE,” Nance said as the Spad strafed mounds of pink underwear. Deke, hunched up on the couch, yanked her flashy little Braun remote from behind his ear.
“Now don’t you get on my case too, Miss rich-bitch gonna-have-a-job—”
“Hey, lighten up! It’s nothing to do with you—it’s just tech. That’s a really primitive wafer you got there. I mean, on the street maybe it’s fine. But compared to the work I do at school, it’s—hey. You ought to let me rewrite it for you.”
“Say what?”
“Lemme beef it up. These suckers are all written in hexadecimal, see, ’cause the industry programmers are all washed-out computer hacks. That’s how they think. But let me take it to the reader-analyzer at the department, run a few changes on it, translate it into a modern wetlanguage. Edit out all the redundant intermediaries. That’ll goose up your reaction time, cut the feedback loop in half. So you’ll fly faster and better. Turn you into a real pro, Ace!” She took a hit off her bong, then doubled over laughing and choking.
“Is that legit?” Deke asked dubiously.
“Hey, why do you think people buy gold-wire remotes? For the prestige? Shit. Conductivity’s better, cuts a few nanoseconds off the reaction time. And reaction time is the name of the game, kiddo.”
“No,” Deke said. “If it were that easy, people’d already have it. Tiny Montgomery would have it. He’d have the best.”
“Don’t you ever listen?” Nance set down the bong; brown water slopped onto the floor. “The stuff I’m working with is three years ahead of anything you’ll find on the street.”
“No shit,” Deke said after a long pause. “I mean, you can do that?”
IT WAS LIKE graduating from a Model T to a ninety-three Lotus. The Spad handled like a dream, responsive to Deke’s slightest thought. For weeks he played the arcades, with not a nibble. He flew against the local teens and by ones and threes shot down their planes. He took chances, played flash. And the planes tumbled. . . .
Until one day Deke was tucking his seed money away, and a lanky black straightened up from the wall. He eyed the laminateds in Deke’s hand and grinned. A ruby tooth gleamed. “You know,” the man said, “I heard there was a casper who could fly, going up against the kiddies.”
“JESUS,” DEKE SAID, spreading Danish butter on a kelp stick. “I wiped the floor with those spades. They were good, too.”
“That’s nice, honey,” Nance mumbled. She was working on her finals project, sweating data into a machine.
“You know, I think what’s happening is I got real talent for this kind of shit. You know? I mean, the program gives me an edge, but I got the stuff to take advantage of it. I’m really getting a rep out there, you know?” Impulsively, he snapped on the radio. Scratchy Dixieland brass blared.
“Hey,” Nance said. “Do you mind?”
“No, I’m just—” He fiddled with the knobs, came up with some slow, romantic bullshit. “There. Come on, stand up. Let’s dance.”
“Hey, you know I can’t—”
“Sure you can, sugarcakes.” He threw her the huge teddy bear and snatched up a patchwork cotton dress from the floor. He held it by the waist and sleeve, tucking the collar under his chin. It smelled of patchouli, more faintly of sweat. “See, I stand over here, you stand over there. We dance. Get it?”
Blinking softly, Nance stood and clutched the bear tightly. They danced then, slowly, staring into each other’s eyes. After a while, she began to cry. But still, she was smiling.
DEKE WAS DAYDREAMING, imagining he was Tiny Montgomery wired into his jumpjet. Imagined the machine responding to his slightest neural twitch, reflexes cranked way up, hype flowing steadily into his veins.
Nance’s floor became jungle, her bed a plateau in the Andean foothills, and Deke flew his Spad at forced speed, as if it were a full-wired interactive combat machine. Computerized hypos fed a slow trickle of high-performance enhancement mélange into his bloodstream. Sensors were wired directly into his skull—pulling a supersonic snapturn in the green-blue bowl of sky over Bolivian rain forest. Tiny would have felt the airflow over control surfaces.
Below, grunts hacked through the jungle with hype-pumps strapped above elbows to give them that little extra death-dance fury in combat, a shot of liquid hell in a blue plastic vial. Maybe they got ten minutes’ worth in a week. But coming in at treetop level, reflexes cranked to the max, flying so low the ground troops never spotted you until you were on them, phosgene agents released, away and gone before they could draw a bead . . . it took a constant trickle of hype just to maintain. And the direct neuron interface with the jumpjet was a two-way street. The onboard computers monitored biochemistry and decided when to open the sluice gates and give the human component a killer jolt of combat edge.
Dosages like that ate you up. Ate you good and slow and constant, etching the brain surfaces, eroding away the brain-cell membranes. If you weren’t yanked from the air promptly enough, you ended up with brain-cell attenuation—with reflexes too fast for your body to handle and your fight-or-flight reflexes fucked real good. . . .
“I aced it, proleboy!”
“Hah?” Deke looked up, startled, as Nance slammed in, tossing books and bag onto the nearest heap.
“My finals project—I got exempted from exams. The prof said he’d never seen anything like it. Uh, hey, dim the lights, wouldja? The colors are weird on my eyes.”
He obliged. “So show me. Show me this wunnerful thing.”
“Yeah, okay.” She snatched up his remote, kicked clear standing space atop the bed, and struck a pose. A spark flared into flame in her hand. It spread in a quicksilver line up her arm, around her neck, and it was a snake, with triangular head and flickering tongue. Molten colors, oranges and reds. It slithered between her breasts. “I call it a firesnake,” she said proudly.
Deke leaned close, and she jerked back.
“Sorry. It’s like your flame, huh? I mean, I can see these tiny little fuckers in it.”
“Sort of.” The firesnake flowed down her stomach. “Next month I’m going to splice two hundred separate flame programs together with meld justification in between to get the visuals. Then I’ll tap the mind’s body image to make it self-orienting. So it can crawl all over your body without your having to mind it. You could wear it dancing.”
“Maybe I’m dumb. But if you haven’t done the work yet, how come I can see it?”
Nance giggled. “That’s the best part—half the work isn’t done yet. Didn’t have the time to assemble the pieces into a unified program. Turn on that radio, huh? I want to dance.” She kicked off her shoes. Deke tuned in something gutsy. Then, at Nance’s urging, turned it down, almost to a whisper.
“I scored two hits of hype, see.” She was bouncing on the bed, weaving her hands like a Balinese dancer. “Ever try the stuff? In-credible. Gives you like absolute concentration. Look here.” She stood en pointe. “Never done that before.”
“Hype,” Deke said. “Last person I heard of got caught with that shit got three years in the infantry. How’d you score it?”
“Cut a deal with a vet who was in grad school. She bombed out last month. Stuff gives me perfect visualization. I can hold the projection with my eyes shut. It was a snap assembling the program in my head.”
“On just two hits, huh?”
“One hit.
I’m saving the other. Teach was so impressed he’s sponsoring me for a job interview. A recruiter from I. G. Feuchtwaren hits campus in two weeks. That cap is gonna sell him the program and me. I’m gonna cut out of school two years early, straight into industry, do not pass jail, do not pay two hundred dollars.”
The snake curled into a flaming tiara. It gave Deke a funny-creepy feeling to think of Nance walking out of his life.
“I’m a witch,” Nance sang, “a wetware witch.” She shucked her shirt over her head and sent it flying. Her fine, high breasts moved freely, gracefully, as she danced. “I’m gonna make it”—now she was singing a current pop hit—“to the . . . top!” Her nipples were small and pink and aroused. The firesnake licked at them and whipped away.
“Hey, Nance,” Deke said uncomfortably. “Calm down a little, huh?”
“I’m celebrating!” She hooked a thumb into her shiny gold panties. Fire swirled around hand and crotch. “I’m the virgin goddess, baby, and I have the pow-er!” Singing again.
Deke looked away. “Gotta go now,” he mumbled. Gotta go home and jerk off. He wondered where she’d hidden that second hit. Could be anywhere.
THERE WAS A protocol to the circuit, a tacit order of deference and precedence as elaborate as that of a Mandarin court. It didn’t matter that Deke was hot, that his rep was spreading like wildfire. Even a name flyboy couldn’t just challenge whom he wished. He had to climb the ranks. But if you flew every night. If you were always available to anybody’s challenge. And if you were good . . . well, it was possible to climb fast.
Deke was one plane up. It was tournament fighting, three planes against three. Not many spectators, a dozen maybe, but it was a good fight, and they were noisy. Deke was immersed in the manic calm of combat when he realized suddenly that they had fallen silent. Saw the kickers stir and exchange glances. Eyes flicked past him. He heard the elevator doors close. Coolly, he disposed of the second of his opponent’s planes, then risked a quick glance over his shoulder.
Tiny Montgomery had just entered Jackman’s. The wheelchair whispered across browning linoleum, guided by tiny twitches of one imperfectly paralyzed hand. His expression was stern, blank, calm.
In that instant, Deke lost two planes. One to deresolution—gone to blur and canceled out by the facilitator—and the other because his opponent was a real fighter. Guy did a barrel roll, killing speed and slipping to the side, and strafed Deke’s biplane as it shot past. It went down in flames. Their last two planes shared altitude and speed, and as they turned, trying for position, they naturally fell into a circling pattern.
The kickers made room as Tiny wheeled up against the table. Bobby Earl Cline trailed after him, lanky and casual. Deke and his opponent traded glances and pulled their machines back from the pool table so they could hear the man out. Tiny smiled. His features were small, clustered in the center of his pale, doughy face. One finger twitched slightly on the chrome handrest. “I heard about you.” He looked straight at Deke. His voice was soft and shockingly sweet, a baby-girl little voice. “I heard you’re good.”
Deke nodded slowly. The smile left Tiny’s face. His soft, fleshy lips relaxed into a natural pout, as if he were waiting for a kiss. His small, bright eyes studied Deke without malice. “Let’s see what you can do, then.”
Deke lost himself in the cool game of war. And when the enemy went down in smoke and flame, to explode and vanish against the table, Tiny wordlessly turned his chair, wheeled it into the elevator, and was gone.
As Deke was gathering up his winnings, Bobby Earl eased up to him and said, “The man wants to play you.”
“Yeah?” Deke was nowhere near high enough on the circuit to challenge Tiny. “What’s the scam?”
“Man who was coming up from Atlanta tomorrow canceled. Ol’ Tiny, he was spoiling to go up against somebody new. So it looks like you get your shot at the Max.”
“Tomorrow? Wednesday? Doesn’t give me much prep time.”
Bobby Earl smiled gently. “I don’t think that makes no nevermind.”
“How’s that, Mr. Cline?”
“Boy, you just ain’t got the moves, you follow me? Ain’t got no surprises. You fly just like some kinda beginner, only faster and slicker. You follow what I’m trying to say?”
“I’m not sure I do. You want to put a little action on that?”
“Tell you truthful,” Cline said, “I been hoping on that.” He drew a small black notebook from his pocket and licked a pencil stub. “Give you five to one. They’s nobody gonna give no fairer odds than that.”
He looked at Deke almost sadly. “But Tiny, he’s just naturally better’n you, and that’s all she wrote, boy. He lives for that goddamned game, ain’t got nothing else. Can’t get out of that goddamned chair. You think you can best a man who’s fighting for his life, you are just lying to yourself.”
NORMAN ROCKWELL’S PORTRAIT of the colonel regarded Deke dispassionately from the Kentucky Fried across Richmond Road from the coffee bar. Deke held his cup with hands that were cold and trembling. His skull hummed with fatigue. Cline was right, he told the colonel. I can go up against Tiny, but I can’t win. The colonel stared back, gaze calm and level and not particularly kindly, taking in the coffee bar and Best Buy and all his drag-ass kingdom of Richmond Road. Waiting for Deke to admit to the terrible thing he had to do.
“The bitch is planning to leave me anyway,” Deke said aloud. Which made the black countergirl look at him funny, then quickly away.
“DADDY CALLED!” NANCE danced into the apartment, slamming the door behind her. “And you know what? He says if I can get this job and hold it for six months, he’ll have the brainlock reversed. Can you believe it? Deke?” She hesitated. “You okay?”
Deke stood. Now that the moment was on him, he felt unreal, like he was in a movie or something. “How come you never came home last night?” Nance asked.
The skin on his face was unnaturally taut, a parchment mask. “Where’d you stash the hype, Nance? I need it.”
“Deke,” she said, trying a tentative smile that instantly vanished. “Deke, that’s mine. My hit. I need it. For my interview.”
He smiled scornfully. “You got money. You can always score another cap.”
“Not by Friday! Listen, Deke, this is really important. My whole life is riding on this interview. I need that cap. It’s all I got!”
“Baby, you got the fucking world! Take a look around you—six ounces of blond Lebanese hash! Little anchovy fish in tins. Unlimited medical coverage, if you need it.” She was backing away from him, stumbling against the static waves of unwashed bedding and wrinkled glossy magazines that crested at the foot of her bed. “Me, I never had a glimmer of any of this. Never had the kind of edge it takes to get along. Well, this one time I am gonna. There is a match in two hours that I am going to fucking well win. Do you hear me?” He was working himself into a rage, and that was good. He needed it for what he had to do.
Nance flung up an arm, palm open, but he was ready for that and slapped her hand aside, never even catching a glimpse of the dark tunnel, let alone those little red eyes. Then they were both falling, and he was on top of her, her breath hot and rapid in his face. “Deke! Deke! I need that shit, Deke, my interview, it’s the only . . . I gotta . . . gotta . . .” She twisted her face away . . . crying into the wall. “Please, God, please don’t . . .”
“Where did you stash it?”
Pinned against the bed under his body, Nance began to spasm, her entire body convulsing in pain and fear.
“Where is it?”
Her face was bloodless, gray corpse flesh, and horror burned in her eyes. Her lips squirmed. It was too late to stop now; he’d crossed over the line. Deke felt revolted and nauseated, all the more so because on some unexpected and unwelcome level, he was enjoying this.
“Where is it, Nance?” And slowly, very gently, he began to stroke her face.
DEKE SUMMONED JACKMAN’S elevator with a finger that moved as fast and straight as a hor
net and landed daintily as a butterfly on the call button. He was full of bouncy energy, and it was all under control. On the way up, he whipped off his shades and chuckled at his reflection in the finger-smudged chrome. The blacks of his eyes were like pinpricks, all but invisible, and still the world was neon bright.
Tiny was waiting. The cripple’s mouth turned up at the corners into a sweet smile as he took in Deke’s irises, the exaggerated calm of his motions, the unsuccessful attempt to mime an undrugged clumsiness. “Well,” he said in that girlish voice, “looks like I have a treat in store for me.”
The Max was draped over one tube of the wheelchair. Deke took up position and bowed, not quite mockingly. “Let’s fly.” As challenger, he flew defense. He materialized his planes at a conservative altitude, high enough to dive, low enough to have warning when Tiny attacked. He waited.
The crowd tipped him. A fatboy with brilliantined hair looked startled, a hollow-eyed cracker started to smile. Murmurs rose. Eyes shifted slow-motion in heads frozen by hyped-up reaction time. Took maybe three nanoseconds to pinpoint the source of attack. Deke whipped his head up, and—
Sonofabitch, he was blind! The Fokkers were diving straight from the two-hundred-watt bulb, and Tiny had suckered him into staring right at it. His vision whited out. Deke squeezed lids tight over welling tears and frantically held visualization. He split his flight, curving two biplanes right, one left. Immediately twisting each a half-turn, then back again. He had to dodge randomly—he couldn’t tell where the hostile warbirds were.
Tiny chuckled. Deke could hear him through the sounds of the crowd, the cheering and cursing and slapping down of coins that seemed to syncopate independent of the ebb and flow of the duel.
When his vision returned an instant later, a Spad was in flames and falling. Fokkers tailed his surviving planes, one on one and two on the other. Three seconds into the game and he was down one.
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