by K. W. Jeter
The general straightened up from his crouch, reaching behind himself for the tent flap. “Keep it up.” Smile wider, and a wink that crinkled his face like a finger poked in an eye-socket. The black skulking getup slid out and looped away on the nearest hold.
Whatever that was all about – Axxter rubbed the side of his face, wondering. But not much. He was too tired, the grit under his eyelids getting sharper edges, to worry about it.
The old warrior was still snoring, scratching with one of his grizzled paws at his breastplate. He’d managed to peel up the edge of the biofoil; a hairline trickle of red oozed out from beneath. Axxter had stripped off the old foil from the armor, implanted in all fresh; you could recycle old foil, often did if you had a standing contract, blanking out the old stuff or just coding up new animation signals if the basic patterns were close enough to what you wanted to do. Not for a job like this, though. It smacked of working on the cheap, and the fine details tended to come out blurry. Plus – the big trouble – the coding for the warrior’s old foil was still being carried by the Small Moon Consortium as a DeathPix account, keyed to this locus.
They might not know that the old foil had been stripped off, wadded up, and tossed downwall – but if he’d been stupid enough to try and contract for an override signal, that would’ve been a dead tip-off that he was horning in on one of their clients. At this stage, he couldn’t be sure of the Mass protecting him from DeathPix retaliating for that kind of action. But what they didn’t know… Beyond that, overrides just cost too damn much money; the Small Moon Consortium threw on a prohibitive fee schedule for that sort of thing, to discourage graffices from sabotaging each other’s work and generally giving the industry a bad name.
The old warrior snuffled as Axxter prodded him in the shoulder. The aged baby’s-face contorted against the intrusion of the world outside its delicious remembering. “Hey. Come on. Wake up.” Realizing how tired he was had made Axxter nerveless. The aged bear didn’t scare him now; he just wanted to get the job done.
The warrior’s fingers had smeared the blood across his leather-sheathed ribs. He’d complained – fussily, like a child – that the new foil ‘tickled’; Axxter knew that whatever nerve endings the old boy had left were buried so far down under armor and scar tissue that he couldn’t feel a thing.
Have to reimplant it. Put a bandage or something over it so the old fool couldn’t go picking at it again. He reached into the corner of the tent for his toolkit. As long as the subject was relatively still, sleeping away…
As Axxter bent over his work, the warrior opened his yellow-and-red eyes, beard splaying over his chest as he lifted his head to watch.
“So that’s what happened.” The warrior nodded. “Just like that. I was there, so you can believe it.”
“You bet.” He watched the tip of the soldering gun tracing the edge of the foil. Great; one less stupid anecdote to listen to. The old guy must have been dreaming, talking inside the walls of his head. “That was great.”
He worked on as the warrior closed his eyes and smiled.
† † †
When he called up the Small Moon Consortium and blinked on GRAFFEX SERVICES, then ACCOUNTS (NEW) (CONTINUING), he got his favorite order desk. Somewhere up on the toplevel, where the Consortium had its offices across a thoroughfare from their Wire Syndicate competition, somewhere a body housed that coarse-sand, laughing voice. Axxter took it as a sign of the high tide his luck was running at to hear it now.
“Ny – how ya been?” She coughed, the rasp right in his ear. “Haven’t heard from you in ages. Not since, um…” She was looking up his account, he knew. “Jeez, it’s been a coupla months.”
“Had a slack period.” He shrugged, though she couldn’t see him “You know how it goes.”
“You poor saps.” Her mother routine; it killed him. “You oughta give up this bullshit, get into something that’s worth money.” Every freelancer on the wall, male and female, had the hots for her, the voice alone.
He didn’t even know her name, though he’d experimented in his head with Lauren for fit, on a historical/cultural association basis. “Don’t worry about me. I got a big payday lined up.”
“Yeah?” Sad and laughing at the same time. She’d heard that one before, from all of them. “I really hope you do. You could use it.”
The uploading of the animation coding took a couple of minutes. “My,” she said when it ended. “That’s a big one.”
He had to laugh – she knew all the old lines. “All of mine are big, sweetheart. That’s the kind of guy I am.”
Laugh in return. “Seriously – big job?”
“I told you.” He’d been up for the last twenty-four hours straight, just doing the code. And there’d only been maybe four hours sleep between that and the long stretch working the patterns into the old warrior’s armor and skin foil. Which followed the hours of listening to war stories and then doing the final designs for the frieze. His eyes had now filled with sand, with black stick figures jeering and contorting through rubbery dances at the corners where he could just barely see them. During the last pull, he’d developed the notion that if he’d rubbed his eyes, his fingers would’ve come away with blood. “This one’s a real break for me.”
“Mmm – guess so.” The rasp moved down an octave. “Who ya working for?”
A little warning bell drilled through his fatigue. “Oh… uh, just a start-up outfit. But, uh, they got some heavy financing. Venture capital from up your way.” Best to be careful. He didn’t think she’d finger him – it would’ve broken his heart – but still… Things had a way of getting around if you didn’t keep a lid on them.
The advance from General Cripplemaker had raised his operating account to the highest level it’d ever been. He watched the numbers slide back down at the corner of his vision as he transferred a hefty whack of it over to the Consortium. Enough for the setup costs for the code and a locked/following narrowcast for a six-month period. That still left a nice fat little wad in the bank.
“You want this started up immediately?”
Axxter shook his head. “No – I got a kickoff time for it.” Cripplemaker had already gone over the details of the banquet with him, right down to the presentation ceremony when they’d bring out the old warrior. Ostensibly to hang some concocted veteran’s medal on him – good conduct, low absenteeism, something or other – but really to show off the new frieze. Hit with a pinlight a second before the animation comes to life: oohs and ahhs from all the tables. With these military tribes, you always knew the timing would be dead on. Axxter dug a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and read it off. “Exactly then. On the dot.”
“You got it.” The voice from the order desk swooped down, almost a kiss. “Hey… good luck.”
“Yeah, thanks.” She was already gone, replaced by the charges for the call. One bill for the Wire Syndicate connect at the start, then the rest switched over to the Consortium when the Small Moon itself had rounded the building and come into transceiving angle. He turned his head and saw its metallic glow, bright against the first of the evening stars.
Should get some sleep. He knew that; it was six hours or so until the banquet. They were already setting up the ceremonial tents when he’d slid out of the encampment, rolling his Norton and Watsonian rig downwall for a bit of privacy. Cripplemaker wanted him there for the shindig, honored-guest status. Or at least the bottom rungs of it; there was a limit to how far you could advance in tribal eyes without killing people. A certain respect for artisans, that was about the top.
Absentmindedly, he rubbed the corners of his eyes, then jerked his hand away, seeing with relief the unstained tips of his fingers. He wished he hadn’t cut it so close, finishing up the code and sending it off. A lot of the last few hours had been just fussing, fine-tuning shit you couldn’t see without a scanning microscope. Way beyond the percept level of an audience like this. Just carried away, and afraid to let it go. The big one, the big break.
Sle
ep. He could just curl up in the sidecar, set the terminal to blast a rouser down his optic nerve in about five hours or so. Plenty of time.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to. Keyed-up the way he was. Heavier than the fatigue.
Hollow time – money in the account; he debated a quick visit to his girlfriend. And decided against it. He didn’t want the fine edge of his mood destroyed by her lacing into him, as he knew she would.
Or he could look up Guyer, wherever she was out on the wall. That’d be nice. You pay, but you get something… nice.
Thinking, dragging the point of his focus across the options laid out at the top of his sight, triggered a spark.
Dreams to none are so fearful…
One of those weird bits the previous owner had programmed in.
… as to those whose accusing private guilt expects mischief every hour for their merit.
Christ, what was that supposed to mean? He let it run on.
Wonderful superstitious are such persons in observing every accident that befalls them; and that their superstition is as good as a hundred furies to torment them. Never in this world shall he enjoy one quiet day that once hath given himself over to be her slave. His ears cannot glow, his nose itch, or his eyes smart, but his destiny stands upon her trial, and till she be acquitted or condemned he is miserable.
The words drizzled away, into silence. Well, fuck – it had left him befuddled.
Crouched down beside the motorcycle, strapped to a transit cable, he let his gaze wander out across the darkening sky. She was there, the angel; he could see her out in the distance. Sparkling with the last of the sun creeping to the other side of the world, a smaller moon whose face he could remember.
EIGHT
The General nabbed him just as he worked free of the crowd and got inside the ceremonial tent. General Cripplemaker shouted into his ear against the din of ragged fanfares and drum paroxysms.
“Where the hell you been!” Axxter felt a spit fleck hit his earlobe. “You got ten minutes! Till it goes!”
“I had to go back out to -”
“What!” The general’s face was red, laced with straining blood vessels. “Speak up!”
A conga line of warriors almost pulled him away; he had to peel a hairy arm from around his waist. The line stamped and writhed through the crowd, fists pummeling into laughing faces.
Axxter leaned closer to the general. “I had to go out to my rig.” The general nodded; a section of the bandstand had collapsed, spilling the horn players into the crowd and taking the screeching top edge off the din inside the tent.
Axxter fluttered the cardboard square he held. “To get my invitation. Security – uhff – security wouldn’t let me in without it.” He rubbed the small of his back, where something round and hard, like a human head, had jarred his spine. A serious fight, with glints of steel in fists, had broken out; he stepped around to the general’s side to get out of the widening shockwave.
Fetching the invite wouldn’t have taken so long if he hadn’t had to go all the way out of the encampment to get it. When he’d woken up, in the dark, his heart had gone racing into a panic before he blinked on the clock and saw that he just had time to scramble into a clean outfit and make it to the banquet. Looking upwall, he’d seen the crowd around the guards at the entrance, besieging the great striped bulk of tent on its platform cantilevered out into space. He’d figured it would be easier to leave the motorcycle and sidecar where it was and just swing on up the transit cable on his own. A good decision, he’d realized when he’d seen the ranks of vehicles, scooter fleets to half-track howdah pavilions, piled up around the tent; the Havoc Mass had sent out invitations to all its allied tribes and several grudging but nonthreatening rivals. There wouldn’t have been room for the Norton in the tangle of wheels and cables.
Even though the sentry at the tent’s entrance recognized him, he still couldn’t get in without the little rectangle – gilt lettering on black: Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero mura pulsanda – in his hand. So another whole trip outside the camp, keeping his head low to avoid fists and missiles, weaseling between sweating backs and legs. He was just now getting his wind back, his good jacket torn, a suspicious-looking beige stain clotting on his boots.
Cripplemaker wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him toward the center of the tent. “But you made it! Great!” Axxter flinched against the general’s roar.
There was a seat waiting for him near the central dais. Junior ranks and a few hereditary dignitaries on either side of him, the closest on the left facedown in a pool of wine dribbling off the edge of the table, one hand still locked on the handle of the jug. “You’re who?” demanded the bleary face on his right.
In the corner of the tent, the horns had climbed back onto the bandstand and were duking it out with the percussion. “Just a hired hand,” said Axxter, pacific smile, as he lifted his elbow from the wine spill. “Little graffex work here and there.”
“Yeah, yeah; great.” The other looked away, down the length of the table, and snagged another pitcher. He drank and stared heavy-lidded in front of himself, ignoring everyone else.
Axxter craned his neck, looking up toward the dais. Pretty sure he’d missed out on the food; the waiters were clearing away greasy plates with gnawed bones on them. He had no appetite, anyway: his stomach was bouncing up and down in expectation.
He could see Cripplemaker in the center of the dignitaries’ table, reseated and talking – laughing, shoulder-clapping – with the men on either side of him. They weren’t in Havoc Mass formal dress; some high mucketymucks from the major allied tribes, Axxter figured. The big guns – old, grizzled bastards with that same narrow, gunslit gaze the general had, the long stare of command and slaughter. When they laughed, it was like steel-jawed traps creaking apart to show the hair-trigger mechanisms within. Cripplemaker leaned back in his chair, drawing on a torpedo-size cigar; his gaze intercepted Axxter’s. The general’s thumbs-up sign showed through an exhaled barrage of smoke.
The alarm clock Axxter had set in the terminal trilled inside his ear, a little red dial ticking at the corner of his vision. Three minutes to showtime, and counting. The band left off their internecine combat and segued into a major-key ostinato, growing less ragged with each da capo. Waiters with cattle prods began clearing the floor in front of the dais.
A corridor formed through the crowd, bodies held back by the Havoc Mass sentries linking arms, digging into the platform surface with their heels. Behind them, the party mob, compressed into a smaller space, frothed and howled, worked up by the band modulating through minor seconds. Axxter could see one of them chewing a sentry’s ear into red gristle; an elbow to his throat sent him tumbling back under the feet of his comrades.
The horns held and vamped a half-step short of resolving the octave; the drums kicked into a double-time accelerando. The tentlights dropped, except for a single spot lancing through the dark, picking out a figure at the far end of the tunnels of faces.
They oiled him good – Axxter barely recognized the old warrior as he strode toward the center of the tent. The medestheticians, the Mass’s own or some freelancers brought in for the occasion, had pumped the old boy full of something that had straightened his spine and put a fierce glitter in his deep-set eyes. Beard washed and combed, then braided and tied with black ribbons, some of them long enough to flutter over his shoulders as he walked, planting a silver-headed staff tall as himself with each step, a contact mike at its tip to snap a bullet report over the mounting din. An embroidered cape hung to the tops of his glistening boots, concealing the armor beneath.
The band’s chord resolved as the old warrior hit the middle of the space cleared for him. He stopped and threw back his head, arm locked to thrust forward the head of the staff. He surveyed the crowd, his yellow teeth showing as he relished the collective gaze fastened on him
The horns and drums cut; miraculously, there was silence. Axxter felt his head vibrating from the battering noise, now
ended. The crowd had shut up, right on cue. They were all straining to get a better view, raising themselves on tiptoe behind the armlocked fence holding them back.
00:00:30 flashed the clock at the corner of Axxter’s eye; 00:00:29, 00:00:28… His heart moved up to sync with the red light.
He looked up to the dais just as General Cripplemaker raised his hand and let it fall like a hatchet. A signal to the old warrior: Axxter swung his gaze around and saw that the bearded-and-beribboned figure had already shrugged the cloak from his shoulders, the bright cloth lying in a puddle around his boots. The air inside the tent thinned as the crowd sucked in its breath.
The warrior’s armor, the great curves of the breastplate, the wide band of the stomacher, the domes of shoulder pads and knee protectors, the brassards and jambeaus – all were blank. Shining foil, mirroring the goggling faces on all sides. An empty canvas, grafted onto the calloused flesh beneath, warmed with the blood pulsing under the skin. Waiting to come to life.
00:00:01 and – 00:00:00. The red clock exploded at the corner of Axxter’s eye.
For a second, he had the feeling that the biofoil would just stay blank. Nothing would happen. They screwed it up. The voice inside him rose, gibbering in panic. Those Small Moon assholes, they screwed it up; they didn’t send out the animation signal -
A black dot formed in the center of the old warrior’s breastplate, metastasized into a Fibonacci swirl. The crowd went aaahhh. Axxter slumped back down in his chair, his spine suddenly liquid with relief.
The dots swarmed, merged; the armor went obsidian, a black mirror. Then gray mist, banks of fog rolling back to reveal a skull-strewn battlefield. Above the landscape, the old warrior looked down at himself in childish wonderment.