Ribofunk

by Paul Di Filippo

Well, the day was pretty shot by then, but we still had time for a tour of the Slikslak itself, to get acquainted with the place we were gonna be demolishin’.

  Everyone was kinda disappointed when we arrived at the old Superconductin’ Supercollider, which had had such a checkered, on-again, off-again history. Wasn’t much of the SCSC aboveground. It was all buried beneath the prairie, a ring of deep-cooled magnets and beam-bouncers and particle- chambers some fifty miles in diameter, all contaminated by decades of experimentation in a nice mild way that promised low rems. (I understand the lunar facility that replaced the Slikslak is twice as big, and cost half as much to build, what with the free vacuum and new superwire.)

  When we got down below, though, everyone’s enthusiasm picked up. This job was gonna be easy—hardly any exotics aside from liquid hydrogen—and the sheer size of the place meant it would take practically forever. What a sugartit assignment!

  Back at the motel, with dusk comin’ down like silk sheets in a Paris helmsley, we found that DDI had laid on a humongous Tex-Mex barbecue for our first night. As I’ve said a hundred times—and not just when Stack was around to overhear—they are swell employers with a lot of class. Smellin’ the beefaloes and leanpigs turnin’ on their spits, holding a cold cheer-beer in my hand, watchin’ the stars poppin’ out one by one like random pixels on God’s antique monochrome display, listenin’ to the joyful chatter of my fellow gips, contemplatin’ the easy job ahead of me, I was as near to heaven as I have ever been on this mostly sad ol’ earth.

  And that peaceful feelin’, so pure and unnatural, I reckon now, is what should have alerted me to my comin’ troubles.

  * * *

  It was the first weekend after we had started the Slikslak job, and we gips were ready to party. Several days of bone-breakin’ labor, with nothin’ to do after hours except raster whatever gaudy gore’n’garters plasma-com the flatscreen was offerin’ or play a hand of flashcards or metabolize some samogon at the dingy Waxahachie roadhouse known as Mustang Sally’s (the lady owner wore a palomino’s tail), had left us achin’ for some release.

  So a bunch of us—me, Geraldine, Tam, Tino, Spud, Geneva, IgE, even Benzene Bill and some others—signed out a van and made the trip into Dallas, lookin’ for some Big Fun.

  I was drivin’ and all my actions felt effortless. We had all had a thorough tonin’-up performed on us by the company cell-scrubber, so all my workweek aches and pains were gone. My skin was as tingly as that of a playpet from Hedonics Plus. Beyond the ultrapure single-crystal windshield, the speedy nighttime scenery looked particularly hi-rez, with all the shadows dithered to fractal depths. I was confident tonight would rack up some megadigits on the Fun Readouts.

  Once in Dallas, we headed straight for Deep Ellum, the prime pleasure district of the city. Parking the van and setting its defenses, we hit the crowded sidewalks, walkin’ with our kickass gipsy style, guys as if we had a barrel between our legs, gals like they were slidin’ along on a greased pole right at crotch height.

  I tell you, it made me proud as the ten-year-old who knocked up the neighborhood widow to be stridin’ through the city with my fellow gips, confident in our solidarity and fully aware of our so-ci-et-al importance.

  Deep Ellum was thronged with folks of every stripe and pedigree enjoyin’ the false halogen day. There were splices runnin’ errands for their owners. There were pre- teeny peptide-poppers four or five cohorts down the genetic line from my own, streamin’ free ’n’ wild with the members of their sets and posses, sportin’ their fancy Action Potential clothes. There were gerrys and gullas. There were NU cops carryin’ flashlights and shockers to keep the peace amongst the various factions, not to mention the local dirty-harrys. All in all, it was a highly stochastic and organic scene.

  Well, we began hittin’ the bars around eight, exposin’ our receptors to various bands rangin’ across the noise spectrum, from multipolar music to old-fashioned country-western picked out on a lone synthesizer, and meanwhile not neglectin’ to ingest all manner of delightful deliriants and insidious intoxicants.

  Around midnight I seemed to come back to myself as if my consciousness was a balloon on a tether light-years-long, which I had to oh-so-slowly reel in.

  “Where are we?” I said to Tino.

  “In Parts Unknown.”

  I gathered that was the name of the bar where we sat. It was a smoky, noisy, jam-packed troglo kind of place. On its raw stone walls hung neo-neon signs that said stuff like REDRAW YOUR MAP2 and WHAT’S YOUR AMPERAGE? The bartender was a simian splice which hung by its tail from an aerial rail and mixed drinks with four human hands.

  All of a sudden, like storm waters through an arroyo, or the opening of petcocks on the feedline of a breeder-tank, I remembered my urges of a few days ago, to bury my face in some down-home Texas target. In an instant I was hornier’n a kid’s pet unicorn. I scoped out the dance floor, spottin’ Geraldine shakin’ her skinny little butt with some local dude. Then my eyes passed over her to alight on my dream girl.

  She stood a good six feet tall, thanks to her hi-heels. Five-inch ivory spikes that grew out of the calcaneum of her tarsus bones, they were tipped with gold caps. The rest of her feet were bare, with special hi-impact soles that I could see when she kicked toward the ceiling. She wore some Wind Skin neoprene tights, but nothin’ above the waist. Her tits were enormous, and thanks to the implanted cantilever lifts, projected out as firm and confident as a CEO’s handshake. She had had the refractive index of her aureoles altered so that they were mirrors. On her cheeks were little patches of iridescent fish-scales. I was willin’ to bet a week’s eft that her tongue was cat-raspy. In short, she was just what the cell-scrubber ordered.

  I pranced out onto the dance floor, cocky as a dirty-harry carrying heavy metal and a journal full of wires.

  Her partner was a little south-of-the-border dude that I pegged right from the start as a Brazilian. The Brazzes was heavy into Texas lately, ever since The Doctor’s Plot to assassinate the PM had caused such chaos in the upper echelons of the NU.

  I tapped the Brazz on the shoulder. “Hey, meninio, how’s about lettin’ me cut in?”

  The little sludgehead just ignored me. His sleeve, though, seemed to like the idea. She stropped her lower lip with her tongue, and I swore I could hear the sandpaper sound of it above the music. The Brazz’s cockiness and his sleeve’s allure got me so damn inflamed that I did something rash. I spun the Brazz around and coldcocked him with a right to the jaw. Then I grabbed his sleeve and tugged her toward the door. She didn’t resist for more’n a milli.

  Outside in some shadows I backed her up against a wall and stuck my tongue halfway down her throat. Then I took a handful of her crotch.

  I was like to die when I encountered a basket full of male equipment. I disengaged quickly from the kiss, but was too shocked to withdraw my hand.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” she said. “Looking for this?”

  I felt everything squirm and writhe beneath my palm like a hooked crawfish, resultin’ in a slow and stealthy envagination and labiation.

  Holy radwaste! I’d picked up a maff!

  Last time I was stateside, maffs had hung out in their own clubs, and a feller was mostly safe from accidentally hittin’ on one. I guessed things had changed since then.

  I backed off and trod on someone’s foot.

  It was the little Brazz. I fell into an offensive posture, then stopped.

  He was holding something out to me. His card. I felt sorta dumb, still makin’ deadly-like with my hands, so I relaxed and took it.

  “Senhor,” said the Brazz, “you will have the honor of meeting me, Flaviano Diaz, in the local cockpit, daiqui a oito diad, or your carcass will grace the window of the local emporio.”

  He bowed and left. That was when I looked at his card.

  It said: Flaviano Diaz, Capoeira Instructor, Redbelt, First Degree.

  * * *

  I stood barefoot and barechested in the dusty yard behind the
motel, sweatin’ under a Saturday noontime sun hot as an episode of Siouxie Sexcrime. What a hell of a way to be spendin’ my free time, practicin’ for an engagement that was like as not gonna result in my own bloody death by evisceration. But I had no one to blame except my own fool self, and as my daddy always said, “Son, there is no point in beatin’ up on yourself if you can beat on someone else.” And that was what I fully intended to do, or die tryin’.

  I lifted another five-pound bag of flour from the crateful I had borryed from the commissary. I walked somewhat awkwardly over to the shade cast by the scrawny pin oak that was the motel’s sole foliage. Hangin’ over a branch from a rope was a sling of plastic netting, just at head-height. I took out the empty slashed flour bag that was inside the ripped net and substituted the full one. When I walked off a few paces, I left a trail of white footprints leadin’ from the pile of flour on the ground.

  Facin’ the suspended flour sack, I went all cat-like, tryin’ to will the tension and doubt from my body and mind. I moved in on the enemy, fakin’ and feintin’, dippin’ and glidin’. When I felt I had that dumb ol’ flour sack completely befuddled, I pivoted and launched a high arcin’ perfect kick at it.

  Sunlight flashed off a crescent of glass as it razored through the bag and nettin’, spillin’ flour like a cloud of construction silicrobes.

  Someone whistled behind me. I turned. It was Benzene Bill.

  “I’m glad you wasn’t wearing those when we tangled before,” he said.

  Bill’s words flashed me back to Marseilles, when we had been involved in the big Mediterranean cleanup. He was new to the team then and seemed to have taken an instant dislikin’ to me, probably cuz I was the only one his size. I got sick of his endless hasslin’ of me and decided to settle things once and for all. In the city, I found an academy that taught savate, or “ler box fransay,” as they call it otherwise. With appropriate trope conditionin’, I was soon qualified to kick the wings off a fly in flight. Shortly thereafter, I put Bill down once and for all. Bill, being a lazy bully, never upped the stakes by goin’ in for his own conditionin’.

  Later, when we were stationed on the Thai-Kampuchean border doin’ jungle-biome restoration at the site of some old refugee camps, I took the chance to study a little at a monastery, under the monks what taught Thai kick- boxin’.

  I had thought I possessed some pretty slick moves. But that was before I had seen the tapes of various capoeira masters.

  Capoeira was Brazz hand- and kick-boxin’. The moves had an African basis, salted with Bahian tropico-funk. Sometimes it looked almost like innocent dancin’. Until the capoerista rocketed his opponent with a heel upside the jaw.

  Me ’n’ Flaviano Diaz in the cockpit was gonna be an interestin’ match. I hoped I would survive to appreciate it in my old age.

  Now I looked down at my moddies that Bill was rasterin’.

  My spurs.

  I had visited the bodyshop the mornin’ after the mess at Parts Unknown, reckonin’ I had no time to waste. The proprietor was a gerry who musta been born a good hundred years ago. I listened close when he spoke, figurin’ to benefit from his experience.

  “Believe me, I know these Brazilians. They share the Argentinian fascination with the knife. Your man will chose a superalloy steel pair of spurs, most likely the Wilkinson or Gilette. Those are fine spurs, but too heavy. They invariably slow one down. Now these”—he took down a slim case, opened it, and revealed two transparent scimitars nestled on black velvet—”are superior in every way. Bioglass by Corning. They hold just as sharp an edge as superalloy, but are featherlight. Hard to focus on, too. Moreover, they provide superior bonding at the bone-interface. We will grow the glass right into your tibia.”

  The old man paused. “Oh, by the way, the law requires me to remind you that these are sold strictly for decorative purposes. Now, if you agree to that condition, shall I begin the installation?”

  What could I say? I took ’em. I also let the guy talk me into a pair of musky scent-glands, located right at my wrist pulse-points. He said it would make me feel more macho and attract more women. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that was how I had gotten into this jam in the first place.

  Archin’ my soles, I jerked the spurs up and down a hair, showin’ off for Bill.

  “Yeah, pretty neat,” Bill agreed. “However, the outlaw line still has Diaz favored over you at three-to-two. I plan to make some hefty eft off your loss, sucker.” Bill started laughing. “See you in the pit tonight.”

  He left before I could contradict him. But I wasn’t sure if he wasn’t right.

  I was gettin’ another flour bag set when Geraldine came into the yard. I pretended not to see her.

  “Lew,” she said, “please, don’t do it. You know DDI will protect you from Diaz. There’s no need to risk your life with something illegal like this.”

  “You say somethin’, Geraldine?”

  “Yes, I said something, you damn stubborn pig’s asshole. I said don’t throw your life away for your stupid pride.”

  “Sorry, Geraldine, I can’t rightly hear what you’re sayin’, for some reason or other.”

  “Oh, go to hell, you ignorant shitkicker!”

  Flour filled the air as my foot thumped back to the earth.

  “When you see me whippin’ that spic’s butt, Geraldine, you will feel different about things.”

  She just glared at me, then stormed away. At the door of the motel, she stopped and yelled out, “And those scent-glands make you smell like a wet ox!”

  I quit practicin’ after that. With supporters like Bill and Geraldine, the spirit had gone plumb out of me. Standin’ one-footed and lifting my ankle to my knee, I used a bandana to wipe off first my left spur, then my right.

  At suppertime I stoked up by eatin’ a big steak, a pound of pasta, and a whole apple pie, chased with a dose of Digestaid. By fight time my stomach would be empty, and my body would have all that protein and carbs to burn. Then I turned in for a little nap, sleepin’ surprisin’ly easy, considerin’ what I faced. When the alarm woke me, I got up and showered. I put on my ostrich-skin boots, which I had had to slit up the back to accomodate the spurs. With my jeans tugged down over ’em, they didn’t look so bad. Then, without sayin’ goodbye to anyone, I took a one-man fuel-cell utility vehicle into the city to keep my appointment. I didn’t feel like travelin’ with the others. Let them show up on their own, if they were comin’ at all, I figured, after all the crap they had given me.

  The cockpit was located in an old warehouse in the Camspanic barrio. The abandoned look of the place was somewhat belied by the quantity of cars parked in the neighborhood. I added mine to the ranks and went inside.

  There were rickety bleachers up to the shadowy rafters, and they were all packed with a restive crowd jacked up on Sensalert. At their focus was an ankle-high wooden ring about as big as a backyard swimmin’ pool. It was filled with sand. Two guys were rakin’ some blood under, so I figured a match had just ended.

  I found the referee, a blonde with pinfeathers where her eyebrows should have been and told her who I was. In a minute she had rounded up Diaz from out of the crowd and brought him over to me. Sure enough, I could see he had gone for the Wilkinson blades.

  “I am gratified to find you are a man of honor, Senhor.”

  “Honor, my pecker, I’m just here for the satisfaction of thrashin’ the ass of a perverted little foreign maff lover.”

  “Whatever the anatomical peculiarities of the lady, Senhor, she was an excellent dancer, and I will be happy to defend her character by leaving you expiring in the dirt from which you arose.”

  After this exchange of front-porch pleasantries we both stripped down on the sidelines, while the ref fetched the Bloodhound.

  Diaz had a midriff that coulda been carved outa chocolate-colored granite. Despite his bein’ three-quarters my size, his upper-body musculature nearly matched mine. I prayed my longer reach would count for somethin’.

  We peele
d down to just our Kevlar crotchguards. I made Benzene Bill—who had moved up to the front row to gloat—hold on to my clothes and boots. Not that I was gonna survive to wear ’em. My balls felt ’bout as big as a Hamster’s.

  The ref brought the Bloodhound round. It came up to me first, licked some of my sweat, then nipped the flesh between my thumb and forefinger to draw blood.

  “Nuffin,” growled the augie-doggie, after rolling the juices around on its palate. Then it did the same for Diaz, who came up clean too.

  “Okay, gents, you’re both operating under correct physionorms, without enhancements. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  We entered the ring, and the crowd cut loose with a barbaric roar that musta resembled what the spectators at the Colliseum sounded like.

  The ref spoke into her lapel mike. “Okay, citizens and otherwise, we have a grudge match here. On my left is a visitor to Greater Dallas, Senhor Flaviano Diaz from south-of-the-border way.”

  Diaz got a big round of applause, which was only natural considerin’ the ties here to his region.

  “And on my right is a homeboy, originally from Robert Lee, Texas—Mister Lew Shooter.”

  My applause matched Diaz’s—more or less. I scanned the audience and thought I spotted Geraldine and some other gips. Then I yanked my concentration back to the cockpit.

  “All right, roosters, you both know the rules—there are none. Except of course that the winner gets to decide if the loser receives medical treatment or not. Go to it, and may the best cock win.”

  The ref backed out in a hurry.

  When her foot left the ring, Diaz moved.

  He tried a gaiopante first, a blow of the hand to my ear to knock my balance out. I deflected it so that it glanced off my temple with stingin’ force. Then I drove two stiffened fingers into his sternum. It was like pokin’ a plank. But I’ve pierced a few plys of steelwood before, and I knew he felt it, though he barely showed it.

  The crowd was screamin’ for blood. As if to oblige, Diaz launched a bencao, a forward kick. I watched as his foot seemed to travel in slow-mo, its slice of sharpened steel headin’ straight for my throat. At what seemed like the last possible moment, I dropped below the blow. Restin’ on one hand, I kicked his single supportin’ foot out from under him.