‘No, of course not,’ said Dielle. ‘But isn’t someone going to get into trouble over this?’
‘Unlikely. Pendue is a professional criminal and has artistic immunity and Pundechan Media carries broad-band indemnity insurance. Charlie will claim exorbitant compensation and our insurers will cross-deal it against one of the hundred of claims they’ll undoubtedly be holding against him. He’ll most likely thank us for stealing it afterwards, confidentially of course. Dean Twenty’s just been sent a list of all the twenty-first century tech in Charlie’s reception room. I’ll wait for him to confirm a viable target before I outline the job to Pendue. He’s going to love it though. Ripping off something that’s under presidential security is going to take some serious grift, so we’ll get top ratings for sure. Maybe we can get you involved directly. That’ll bump the ratings even more.’
Dielle didn’t like the sound of that. ‘What? Me? Err...’
Kiki studied him for a minute. He wondered if he was being tested.
She nodded. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’ve just checked with my sume profiler and he tells me there would only be a 30% match to your optimum demographic if you were co-scene. Well done dear.’ She patted his hand. ‘I can be a bit too keen sometimes. Dean Twenty’s just confirmed that Pleewo has a tablet computer, whatever the Dice that is, that will be ideal. I’m arranging a face-to-face with Pendue now. I’d ask you to come along but we wouldn’t be able to use it in your timeline. If we did, it would blow the setup and could provoke sumer rejection when they saw you in the making-of sume that we’ll release after the theft if we’d not included it in their feeds earlier. From this point on, you can’t discuss it with anyone who we might want to include in your dailies. And this conversation is offline too. Best if we don’t mention it again until the job’s done. I’ll tell you when. ’
‘Jeez, you don’t hang about do you?’
‘What do you mean, darling?’
‘We haven’t finished breakfast yet and you’ve already planned a major heist.’
‘That’s the advantage of having a hit sume, darling.’ She stroked his hand again. ‘People return my pings now. Speaking of which, I’ve got a major music critic on hold who wants to interview the band after the gig tomorrow. What do you say?’
‘I think you’d better check with Fencer and Fingerz,’ said Dielle.
‘I’ve already obtained their approval to let Pundechan Media handle the PR for the band darling. In fact I’ve taken on a specialist to handle it all. You’ll like her, she’s a very special specialist and unbelievably connected. Why don’t I ask her to come over to talk to you here while I go and get my ears bent by Monsieur I-am-ze-greatest-tief-of-all-time Pendue?’
‘I’m going to meet up with the band and run through the set a couple more times. Maybe you should send her to where we’ll be rehearsing so she can meet everyone. It’s not like I’m the leader you know, we’re all equal in this.’
‘Sure, sure,’ said Kiki, waving her hand at an invisible fly. ‘Good idea, but if you’re going to be in full privacy you’d better tell Sis to allow her a looksee so she can find you.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Her doName is Petina Techumai Thornbird Tëssä but everyone knows her as 4T. She runs a nowplus mobile Spin bar in NYcubed. She knows everyone.’
‘Forty? People call her forty?’
‘Number 4, letter T. Her pet name was Tina down on the farm.’
Dielle stopped trying to decode what Kiki was telling him. It was hurting his brain.
{[Let the 4T woman know where our rehearsal is please]}
[[••]]
‘You should be careful with those rehearsals, darling,’ said Kiki.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t think you should get too good’
‘Why not?’
‘You might start singing in tune.’
The band had been rehearsing for nearly an hour when Louie appeared out of the emtitrash under Dielle’s keyboard. If he’d had a real head, he’d have banged it.
‘You have got to be joking,’ he said.
‘About which bit?’ said Dielle. There was something about Louie that irritated him on sight. He’d even resented having to send Louie the message briefing him about Fencer’s idea and asking him to come to the rehearsal.
‘All of it. First that you,’ Louie waved a hand at Dielle, ‘could ever front a band, second that you expect to send your shit back to my time and make a cent out of it and third that you would want my opinion in the first place.’
‘Why can’t I front a band?’
‘Because kid, you have my genes and no matter how much I paid them to upgrade and change me into you, they can’t alter the hard-wired fact that you are tone-deaf. Just like I am.’
‘That’s our unique selling point,’ said Fencer who, much to Dielle’s surprise, seemed to be intimidated by Louie. ‘No one here has ever heard anyone sing like Blood.’
‘Blood?’
‘It’s my stage name,’ said Dielle.
‘What? You mean as in baying for - which is what your audience will be doing when they hear you? It doesn’t matter if there are enough weirdos here who think you’re dupe, it’s where you’re sending it to that’s important and when I was a kid you had to be able to sing to sell records.’
‘We’ve been researching that,’ said Fencer, ‘and we’ve found plenty of evidence to the contrary.’
‘Anyway,’ said Dielle, ‘that’s not the point. We don’t need to sell more than a handful.’ Fingerz nodded, sage-like inside his private cloud.
‘So what do you need me for?’
‘You’re the only person who’s from that time we can ask, and believe me if there was anyone else…’ Dielle looked at the ceiling.
‘Ask what?’
‘We want to ask you to professionally advise us,’ said Dielle as though he’d just thrown up a little in his mouth.
Louie stopped in mid-air. ‘What? You want me to be your manager?’
‘Want is an exaggeration,’ said Dielle. ‘And manager, definitely not. We just need your advice.’
‘Why should I want to be a manager of a band I already know has failed? I know I’m old but I’m pretty sure I would have remembered if there was a band with you three deadbeats in it when I was a kid. What name are you going under?’
‘That’s one of the things we need to ask your advice on,’ said Fencer. ‘I’ve run an analysis of the names of music groups from your teenage era but can’t figure out any patterns, common meanings or even sense. We have our first gig tomorrow and need to have decided on a name by then.’
‘Yeah, we want something that fits with the music and your time. Like when you were sixteen,’ said Dielle, warming to the theme despite himself. ‘In fact, you are pretty much our target audience. If we could persuade the teenage Louie Drago to buy our record we’d be instantly rich according to Fencer.’
Louie had already checked out Fencer’s credentials with Sis. He looked at Dielle and flipped a holographic thumb in Fencer’s direction. ‘Well, Blood, at least him, I’d believe.’
Dielle tried hard not to take offence. He failed. ‘Look, just forget it will you?’
‘Oh, keep your hair on. Why don’t you play me something and I’ll see what occurs. Maybe work the old LCD magic. I have a gift for names, you know.’
Nobody could think of a reason not to, so they performed their latest composition. Dielle’s off-key humming-cum-whining featured prominently, especially during Fingerz’ ten-minute free-jazz solo. Louie hovered impassively in the middle of the room. He used his famous blank negotiation expression which, despite decades of practice, nearly cracked when Fencer performed his fifty-five-and-a-half bar, triple time-signature air drum solo. After they’d eye-synched to segue into their signature collapsed fade they grinned at each other and sat proudly, waiting for Louie’s response.
‘The Garlic Farts,’ said Louie.
All three longazed while they co
nsulted Sis. Colonic emtis had been dealing with intestinal gas for so long that nobody had ever experienced a fart in this spaceship. Nobody except the naturalists.
‘Is this your way of turning us down?’ said Fencer.
Louie hovered toward the emtitrash and ran through a series of suitable put-downs from his extensive list but couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than silence. He looked at all three in turn, slowly shaking his head then dropped into the trash.
Fencer, stared at the empty emti. ‘The Garlic Farts!’ he said.
‘Un-dicing-real,’ said Fingerz.
‘Yeah,’ said Dielle, shaking his head. ‘I’ll let Kiki know.’
‘You can’t be him, man,’ said Fingerz.
‘I find it hard to believe too,’ said Dielle, ‘but Sis confirmed it. Three times. What’s really scary is I don’t know if I’ll wind up looking like him when I get old.’
Fencer shook his head. ‘That’s not going to happen. You have complete control over your ageing process and can delay it almost indefinitely. He didn’t have anything other than surgery to help him.’
‘You mean like knives in the flesh, man?’ said Fingerz. He pulled heavily on a fresh shiff. ‘Jinga Cruz!’ he wrapped his arms around his chest and rocked back and forth in his chair muttering muso while his PersonalSpace darkened to solid grey.
‘Hey,’ said Dielle. ‘That phrase you picked up on in the last piece, how’d it go?’ He tried to mimic something he’d heard Fingerz play. He struggled to find the notes, trying to prise Fingerz out of his shell. It took a while.
Halfway through the next run-through, Fencer stopped playing. He sat gazing toward the vexit, transfixed. Dielle and Fingerz turned to see why. They, too, stopped in their tracks. In breathless silence the three men stared at the visitation.
Dielle drank in her beauty as if he had never seen beauty before. He could feel a shift in the universe. Something deep inside him had changed, some inner peace he hadn’t been aware of had been disturbed, and he suspected he might never regain it. He could hardly tear his eyes off her but when he did he saw that Fencer and Fingerz were as captivated as he was. They sat paralysed by something that could never be fabricated or copied.
No technology could ever replicate what the three dumbstruck musicians were experiencing because their reaction was in response to a beauty that did not lie in physicality at all. It wasn’t in her stature: she was at least a head shorter than Dielle, although her grace and poise created the impression that she was much taller. It wasn’t to do with her unblemished ebony skin or her stunning figure. It was nothing to do with the silky black hair that was pulled high above her head and then fell down to her delicate collar bones. It wasn’t in her slender neck where she wore a choker of living fur or in her deep, dark eyes that gazed out into a universe only she could see. It wasn’t the fine bone structure of her face that she’d inherited from a tribe of humans who had nearly perished in a dark continent millennia ago, and it wasn’t her full lips that parted slightly as she stood waiting for what was, to her, a familiar effect to wear off. It was simply Tina Tëssä doing what she did best: being herself. She smiled serenely and looked anywhere except into the eyes of the men who could do nothing but seek out hers.
[[Instacom via 4T request connect]]
{[Proceed]} thought Dielle, urgently.
[[‘It’s OK,’]] said a sensual, soothing voice in his head. [[‘You’ll get used to it in a minute.’]]
{[What’s happening? I mean I know what’s happening but what’s happening?]]
[[‘It’s quite normal. I have this effect on people. Once you get used to me you’ll be OK. Just let it be.’]]
Let it be, thought Dielle. He had no idea what the it was that he was supposed to let be. His mind was split between turmoil and fascination. He was surprised to realise that there was another, more ominous emotion prodding at his psyche. There was something terrifying about this woman.
{[Sis?]}
[[•]]
{[What’s going on?]}
[[You have encountered a perfect. The initial adjustment period can be unnerving. Just wait a few minutes, you’ll be fine]]
{[A perfect?]} thought Dielle, feeling anything but fine.
[[Petina Techumai Thornbird Tëssä has what is sometimes referred to as the golden gene. It means she is, as far as other humanoids are concerned, physically perfect]]
{[A perfect human being? And she owns a bar?]}
[[Yes, in NY3. It’s extremely successful]]
{[I’ll bet]}
[[Life begins at 4T’s]]
{[What?]}
[[Their slogan. Life begins at 4T’s]]
He didn’t know if his life had just begun, again, or had reached a culmination. He could barely move. The others had adapted already. Fencer was acting almost normal and Fingerz had walked over to 4T and offered her a shiff, which she had declined with a smile that made the room ten degrees warmer. Even odder, as far as Dielle was concerned, was that even though he was staring at a person who seemed to have patented beauty, he felt zero sexual attraction towards her. This being was above sex.
He wondered how he could look at this woman, share the same physical space as her perfect presence and yet feel no desire to engage with her in a physical way. He still couldn’t take his eyes off her but he had no will to do anything other than just be as he was. Just be, he thought, wasn’t that what she’d said? Slowly, he sat down and looked at his hands. He didn’t need to look at his hands, he just needed to get control over his eyes again.
Then she walked over to his keyboard. She moved like a current through deep water. He looked up into her infinite eyes and opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out.
[[‘It’s OK,’]] she said, still through instacom. She looked down coyly and smiled and Dielle stopped breathing again. [[‘I expect you remember that Kiki told you I’m going to handle all the media for the band?’]] Dielle nodded, exhaling in staccato. [[‘Great name by the way. I love it.’]] Dielle nodded again, trying to tear his eyes off her by moving his head. That didn’t work, his eyes were ready to swivel past 180 degrees if he tried to force things. [[‘Tell you what, why don’t you play me something?’]] Dielle nodded and commanded his eyes to look at Fencer and Fingerz. They nodded back.
Thank Dice for non-verbal communication, thought Dielle, playing the first faltering chords of Piece Eight. Three songs later he could play normally and look at 4T without feeling like he was standing on the edge of a cliff in a howling gale. She smiled directly at him and his heart didn’t stop. Sis was right. He’d be fine.
As she listened she casually stroked the fur around her neck. Her matching bracelet animated and turned towards him. A dark hole opened, a hole with two rows of needle-sharp teeth. A flash of light reflected from something in the fur above the maw.
{[What’s that?]}
[[A chikanquen kit. The one around Ms Tëssä’s neck is its mother]]
{[It’s an animal?]}
[[Wearable pet]]
{[Can I stroke it?]}
[[You could try but those teeth are not decorative and I cannot guarantee to regenerate a fully functional finger in time for tomorrow’s performance]]
{[They’re dangerous?]}
[[Not to their hosts]]
Dielle smiled at 4T who smiled back in slow motion. She petted the animal at her throat. He understood. {[Perfects need protection]}
[[••]]
She didn’t stay much longer. She told them how she intended to handle the media requests and gave them advice about specific interviewers. While she never attended the interviews in person (to avoid the inevitable distractions), she kept a live instacom link open and fed her clients pertinent information, suggested responses and moral support. She was personal friends with every sume-star and mediator onSlab and had already arranged a busy itinerary of media appointments. She was business-like, precise and held Dielle’s attention completely. It wasn’t until she’d left the rehearsal space that he realised she
hadn’t spoken a single word.
‘Dice!’ Said Fingerz. ‘Are we in good hands!’
‘Perfect hands,’ said Fencer.
Dielle nodded. He was getting good at nodding.
nine
The DreamTimeShine music festival had been running as a bi-cycle event onSlab for longer than anyone remembered. No one remembered because no one needed to remember. They could query Sis as easily as recalling from their organic memories and be assured of a more reliable, significantly faster result. Such a query would reveal that this was the 127th time the festival had been held in its current format and the 34th time it had been held in Mitchell DownSide. The venue was a natural (or the closest thing that passed for natural onSlab) stepped demi-bowl of grass-covered hillsides with an acoustically transparent lake behind the main stage that provided a signature reverb. Mitchell was a permanent daylight section, so the festival was held under a night shadow to maximise the lighting and projection effects. This meant that the festival-goers could hang out, warm and comfortable on the slopes and enjoy spectacular shows from stages that were populated by photophobic performers. It was a tradition for the festival organisers to launch a newcomer as an opening act and the word had gone around that The Garlic Farts were going to be something special. Dielle’s fame as a sume-star, coupled with 4T’s expertise as an attention manipulator had fuelled the media into a frenzy of anticipation and wildly inaccurate speculation.
The buzz was palpable as the crowd waited for the Farts’ debut. Even Louie couldn’t resist the urge to show up, although he was anticipating a completely different form of entertainment.
Without warning, a two-metre-high lisitessaloid appeared in the centre of the main stage and rotated slowly through at least seven of its dimensions. It spoke:
‘What part of stop do you not understand, you moron spawn?’
The soundman looked down at his display. He knew he had perceived this message aurally, and not as a direct feed through his neural interface, just as the more than twenty thousand citizens in front of him had, but he also knew that the sound had not gone through his surroundsound system. It had somehow been delivered to the audience as a distributed sound field, at the same intensity for everybody, and none of his technology was involved. ‘Cool,’ he said and queried Sis as 20,156 curious festival goers did the same and were given the same answer: origin unknown.
Slabscape: Dammit Page 9