Unknown Man: 'Those are all correct. There was something from Mr. Rogers's neighborhood, but it was fairly subtle. And The Jeffersons, of course.'
Gunther: 'The Jeffersons we got weeks ago. It's been cropping up almost every time. I didn't bother to mention it, but you can check the records. What I want to know is, why was Serge wearing leg warmers?'
Unknown Man: 'Flashdance, of course.'
I stopped the tape. Since when was Gunther a doctor of anything? Nobody else called him doctor. And who was the other guy?
I kept listening, but the conversation turned into a technical discussion about the computer program that Gunther was using. Eventually Gunther said, 'Look at her history with music video. She nailed the theme song. Nailed it. Picked it off the tape with no hesitation, and without the sound. Rocket Squad were an unsigned band, we showed her a demo video, but 'Planetary Journey' charted for eighteen weeks. Everybody loves it. Kids love it. Adults love it. Black people, white people, everybody. I put a percentage of the success of that show down to Ms. Orbach's choice of music.'
Unknown Man: 'Maybe. But without Orbach's input, our predictors picked Faith Is Mine and we'll never know how that would have done if we'd only pushed it.'
Gunther: 'I know we're doing the right thing moving her out of video and on to TV. She's ready for the big markets.'
Unknown Man: 'Are your analysis programs ready, though? I'm still not convinced we can accurately assess Ms. Orbach's results. I read through the transcripts myself and I picked up things that I think your software missed. And let's face it, whatever your enthusiasm over your patients—'
Gunther: 'My staff, Bob.'
Bob: 'Your staff might be, it's the software that we ultimately stand or fall by. Cookie as a raw talent is fine, as far as that goes. But this is Dataplex, not the Woo-woo Institute. We need to turn what she does into code, and we need to do it accurately. That's the business we're in. Government grants might work fine for start-up money, but we're in this for the long haul. We need to automate. That was the whole point of the exercise. To troll the data and come up with a formula, or formulae, that tell us what's successful. Don't lose sight of that.'
Gunther: 'But they're my people. I'm proud of them.'
Bob: 'That's fine, for as far as it goes. Eventually we need to pull your guys out. If word gets out that Dataplex are using nutcases instead of science, we'll be ruined. You might as well advertise crystal-ball readings.'
Gunther: 'Hey, I hear Ronald Reagan has an astrologer.'
Laughter. The tape cut off.
I sat there for a while, listening to the clock tick. No stopping now. I put another tape in, skipping again to the analysis. This one was recent. In fact, it was the session that Gunther had reluctantly recorded after I'd spotted Gonzalez and got driven away by the storm and ended up with the orchid taste. My stomach clenched, remembering.
Bob: 'Did you get that part about Leroy Jones?'
Gunther: 'Yeah, I checked it out, there's no security leak.'
Bob: 'There has to be.'
Gunther: 'Not necessarily. Someone could have mentioned the name, she could have heard it on the radio, on an interview or something. Also, Jones worked as a minor illustrator on some network specials. She might have seen it when she used to watch TV, years ago.'
Bob: 'Or she could be watching TV now. Has anybody tried to check that?'
Gunther: 'She's not. Believe me, she wouldn't. She's too scared.'
'Hah!' I said. 'I'm not too scared now. This is really insulting. What games are you guys playing with my head?'
Bob: 'How did she get his social security number, then?'
Gunther: (whistles Twilight Zone theme)
Laughter.
When I stomped off to the dojo that night, I was fired up to fight; but it wasn't going to be that kind of class. The Okinawans had arrived and this session was all about them inspecting the dojo, checking us out, and probably talking to us about their plans for the American branch of their organization. It seemed like every student who'd ever trained showed up, some of them coming out of the woodwork after absences of weeks and months. Everybody's gi was ironed. Troy's hair was slick with gel and he flashed me a smile over Cori's head.
The Okinawans entered en masse and we all bowed formally to them. Speeches were made. Miss Cooper usually led the class, but tonight Sensei Hideki, the younger brother of Shihan Hideki, the head of the Budokokutai, led the warm-up personally.
Sensei Hideki turned out to be a sixth-dan, one rank below our Shihan but a lot more physically capable. He gave all the instructions in thickly accented Japanese that nobody could understand. We all struggled to imitate him as he dropped into a full box split, did one-armed push-ups on his fingertips, and then jumped up and swung his leg rapidly up over his head like he was going to kick the wall over his own shoulder. After a long series of push-ups and sit-ups and various basic drills, he indicated that we should 'stretch out, own time' and then started hitting the makiwara like he was chopping down a tree. The whole dojo shook. He didn't break a sweat.
'Wow,' I muttered to Gloria. 'So this is the real thing.'
'He makes Shihan look like Mr. Potato Head,' replied Gloria out of the corner of her mouth.
The Okinawans were hard disciplinarians. They drove us like cattle in repetitive performance of basic moves, and then when we got to kata practice they made us sit in low sumo stances for minutes on end. Sensei Hideki went around shoving everybody down so low that our butts were practically on the floor.
They ignored the color belts, luckily. The black belts got picked on bigtime, but I guess we weren't worthy of their notice. It was oppressively hot but they refused to open the doors or turn on the fan. Cori fainted during Sei-enchin and had to go sit on the side.
What was funny about the Okinawans was how small and trucklike their bodies were. The tallest couldn't have been as tall as the average American woman, but they were all wide-bodied and they had huge, deformed knuckles from makiwara practice. They moved stiffly but with perfect geometrical form. They looked like little robotic bulls. I'd never been able to achieve this kind of hardness, no matter how much I practiced trying to make my gi snap when I punched. It's something I've noticed about Troy, too. I think it's a black thing. We can't move like little Nazis – why would you want to? We have a more flexible sense of time. We just don't fit in well with this perfect-form, perfect-time drilling and it feels unnatural to try. Look how Miss Cooper messed up my side kick when she tried to teach me to do it 'right'. Because I also notice that when it comes to sparring, me and Troy can get the job done.
Having said all that, I was totally impressed with the little Okinawans but it seemed they didn't feel the same about me. During practice of Saifa, Sensei Hideki walked right by me and then stopped to watch me perform my stomp-kick.
'Queen Kong!' he said. 'You break floor, you pay for it!'
Then he laughed uproariously at his own humor.
I felt myself go hot and I forgot the next move of the kata. I had to apologize and go kneel in zazen in the corner. They ignored me after that.
I glanced sideways at Cori. She was blushing and bowing to one of the masters, her braid swinging and slapping her butt as she nodded enthusiastic agreement with a little Okinawan no taller than five feet two, as if she was a Playboy Bunny and he was Hugh Hefner.
We all wanted to brown-nose. I'd probably have been doing it myself if Masunobu Hideki hadn't called me Queen Kong. We were so eager to have the Great Masters among us. We were so eager to be a part of the legends.
I wondered how long Masunobu Hideki would last in the Grid.
At the end of the training session, the masters gave a rousing speech in translation and everybody clapped and cheered. We all staggered up the stairs and went to Tony's for pizza and to compare notes. Everybody's quadriceps were killing them from all the sumo stances, which seemed like a sign that we were finally being initiated to the inner mysteries of the martial arts. Miss Cooper's eyes were aligh
t with excitement. The Okinawans had paid a lot of attention to her. Evidently she hadn't disgraced the dojo after all, and she said that Shihan Norman had even said 'Nice going' after she'd finished her naginata practice in the private black-belt session upstairs.
'Pocketbook-and-broom is going to be great,' she said.
'Yeah, tell that to my nuts,' said Mr. Vukovich, to general laughter. 'Cori keeps getting past my cup with the straps of her pocketbook, dude. I hope I can still have kids.'
By the time I got home, I had decided that I was being grumpy about the Okinawans because of the Dataplex thing, and that wasn't right. I wasn't going to let one bad experience corrupt me for everything else. Karate had done a lot for me. Dataplex hadn't. It was Dataplex I should be going after – not the karate masters who held the key to my growth as a person, my physical freedom from food addiction.
I fed the cats and picked up the phone.
'Miles,’ I said. 'Remember how you told me you could get into people's records and stuff using your computer? If I gave you a name and a social security number, could you find out whether that person exists?'
'Whether they exist? I can do better than that, I hope. What's it all about?'
I read the name and number off a piece of paper I'd copied from the tape.
'Who's Leroy Jones?'
'I was hoping you could tell me.'
holy toledo
Arla has long toes with red-painted nails. She is standing in a shallow well puddle, watching it change colors as it reads her.
She has taken you near to the dead zone. You don't know how far you are from the mines, but you know you are close to the dead Grid because of the reappearance of artifice in the Grid's structure. The foundation here is almost like solid ground.
'You'd like my golem, wouldn't you?' she taunts the Grid, throwing her head back and laughing into the whirl of web-arms, the moving tapestry that human assumption wants to call 'branches' or 'forest roof even though nothing here is green. The colors of the gel around her feet, initially only pastel washes like bleeding aquarelles, begin to coagulate and form fine lines radiating from the edges of her skin. The lines creep outward and then, as if bent by an invisible current within the gel, they begin to curve around the edges of her foot so that they all point the same way. Many-stranded plaits of color flow along the sides of her feet and past her heels, arrowing towards the black of the well. When the strands reach the well they appear as luminous neon against the black backdrop; then, as if heavier than the surrounding substrate, they sink, wavering, until they are swallowed.
Deep in the well, near the limits of visibility, something small and pallid appears. At first its form is amoebic, but soon it begins to grow and resolve until you can see knobs of flesh over translucent bone, red and pulsing as if with blood from an unseen heart.
You hear a metallic click. There is a weapon pointed at the back of Arla's head.
'Step away from the well, please, Major.'
It's Klaski of all people. You recognize her voice and her Jean Naté after-bath splash.
'Don't be stupid,' Arla snaps. Her tone is completely different: no serenity, no l-could-be-a-better-mother-than-your-mother. No romance. You wonder what Klaski sees in her eyes. If they are still horror-movie yellow. 'It only has my feet. You can't make a whole golem from a pair of feet.'
'With all due respect, Major, you are placing yourself and this entire unit at risk. You don't know what the Grid can do with the information you're giving it. And what if you fall in?'
'F@*k off, Lieutenant,' says Arla. She names Klaski's rank sneer-ingly, like she's offended by Klaski's formality. But she steps out of the well fluid and shakes its residue off her feet. She pulls Gossamer tighter around her shoulders.
Klaski is shaking so hard that you doubt whether she could aim the weapon effectively.
'I'm going to have to ask you to hand over the Equipment as well, ma'am.'
Equipment: that must mean you. Arla is breathing hard. She's like a horse after an uphill gallop. She's blowing and shifting her weight from foot to foot.
'Don't make this personal, Lieutenant. You don't want to f*$k with me.'
'I don't know what the hell you're playing at, ma'am, but if you don't come out of the well I will shoot you.' Arla comes out of the well.
'You must have misunderstood me,' she said softly.'Give me the weapon.'
'No, ma'am, I can't do that.'
'I'm your commanding officer and you will follow orders.'
'I'm not a donkey, ma'am.'
'No? Maybe you should be a donkey, Lieutenant. You disobeyed your commander once and look what happened.'
'Ma'am, with all respect I don't believe you're one hundred percent in command of your full faculties, ma'am, and I cannot give you the weapon.'
Arla charges her. Klaski slips and falls to her knees on the edge of the well. Arla grabs the gun by the barrel.
'Now you don't want to drop that in the well,' she says.'Gimme it.'
'Ma'am, don't make me shoot your hand off.'
Arla kicks her in the face and Klaski's head snaps back; then Arla jumps on top of her and wrenches the gun away. Klaski manages to squeeze off two shots: one shears Arla's hand neatly in half, leaving only her thumb and a bleeding stump. The other cuts a swathe through the nearby Grid, releasing a cloud of pollen and an enormous burst of rainbow light.
Arla roars. She sweeps up Klaski in both arms like a judo player, hoists her over one hip and dumps her headfirst on the ground, Klaski's forehead hit the Grid, her neck crumples and then, as Arla releases her, her body topples into the well.
Then Arla sticks her hand between her thighs and sways. You can't see her face but you can hear her gasping and grunting for control of the pain. Blood slides into the well and dissolves in pink puffs.
Lewis and Hendricks turn up within moments. Hendricks is pale.
'She . . .she was trying to kill herself. She jumped in the well. I couldn't stop her,' Arla gasps. 'l tried but she shot me.'
Hendricks runs to the edge of the well and looks down on Klaski's sinking body, horror-struck.
'We have to get her out! Is she dead? Arla, is she alive or dead?'
She leans in and starts dragging Klaski up by one arm. You can hear her grunting and cursing and making mewling noises of effort.
'Help me, Arla!'
Now Lewis is blocking your view. Lewis is bending over you, removing the dressing, checking the wound. 'Crossbow,’ she mut-ters. 'I've never seen a golem with a crossbow before.'
You can hear Gonzalez consoling Hendricks, and Hendricks sobbing and raging. Lewis ignores them both. She whispers, 'Gossamer, you're going to have to get yourself up and out or here. This tissue isn't healed yet. Arla's not dressing it right at all, some friggin' doctor, she probably doesn't want you to fly. I'm putting some temporary mesh over it and spraying it, and I think you'll soon be able to unfold it without—'
'What are you doing, Lewis?'
'Just checking to be sure Gossamer didn't get damaged in the struggle. It's fine.' Lewis has quickly taken care of Gossamer's wound and now pats the dressing back in place, turns, and moves out of your line of vision. Arla is watching her suspiciously. She comes over to you and touches the edge of the dressing but doesn't remove it.
Hendricks has gotten Klaski out of the well, but Klaski is unconscious and has a lump on her head the size of an egg. Hendricks starts doing CPR.
'Pulse, pulse, where are you, pulse?' she chants. Arla ignores the two of them. She picks you up and dons you again.
'You won't last long out here if this is the quality of your unit,' she says harshly to Lewis. Lewis abandons Klaski and bull-charges Gonzalez. You feel the impact go through Gonzalez's body; she staggers back, bracing herself up against her straightened right leg as her left bends to absorb the shock.
You can't see Lewis, but after a few seconds you realize that Gonzalez must have her in a headlock. Lewis must have tucked her chin in or something, because she's still strug
gling and if Gonzalez really had her around the neck she'd be unconscious by now.
'Hendricks,'croaks Lewis. 'Incinerate!'
You can hear her, but Hendricks is too far away. Lewis fumbles in her suit and drags out a star-shaped immolation charge. She chucks it at Hendricks, who catches it and looks at it with wide eyes. She is going to throw it at Lewis, and Arla – and you!
'Oh no, you don't!' cries Gonzalez, and throws Lewis on the ground, shoving her into the well just as she did with Klaski. But Lewis is still conscious, and she fights and scrabbles to get out. Gonzalez lunges at Hendricks and tries to get the charge off her. Hendricks drops the charge, but before Arla can get it Hendricks's ray gun goes off.
You hang there on Arla's back for several seconds before you are sure that Gossamer is still alive. Arla steps back a few paces, apparently unhurt. She's dragging Hendricks by the armpits.
'Don't die, bitch, or you'll blow everything.'
Hendricks slides into the well. Arla releases a stream of curses to the sky. She turns and stomps away from the well, giving you a full view of Hendricks's staring-eyed body sinking. Her chest is nothing but shards of battle armor, bone and blood where the ray gun got her. The well breaks up the blood like water breaks up oil.
The situation has taken on its own momentum now. You find yourself wishing Arla would get something right, gain some control – anything would be better than this mayhem. Now she's trying to wrestle Lewis back into the well, but Lewis has got hold of the charge that Hendricks dropped and has coded it to fire.
'It's going off, doc,' she hisses at Gonzalez. 'We'll both be torches in a second, so do your worst.'
Gonzalez lets her go and dives for cover. She throws herself on her face and puts her hands – what's left of them – over the back of her head. You can see the whirl of the Grid overhead and the multiple flashes of the explosion. You are blinded for several seconds. Finally, when Gonzalez gets up, you see that a chunk of the Grid has been blasted to black. Small flames dance along its limbs and there's a smell, worse than burning hair. All you hear are jungle noises, deep inside your ears like a cloud of insects in your head. Gossamer's olfactories too ache from the overload.
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