by Pat Cadigan
"What is that?" said Shuet in a low voice. "And how the hell did it get in here with us?" Chatter was dying all over the room as everyone began to notice the stranger.
"Well, I see the new members of our Entertainment department are starting to trickle in." No one turned to look at Clooney, who had come up to the table and was standing behind one of the empty chairs, waiting to be invited to sit down. Gabe could practically feel everyone willing Clooney to go away.
"He goes by the colorful appellation of'Visual Mark,' " Clooney went on relentlessly, "and he-"
"That's Visual Mark?" Dinshaw said, without really acknowledging Clooney's presence. "I'll be damned. He looks like one of his own rock videos."
"Rock videos?" Silkwood raised an eyebrow at her.
"My kids live on them." Dinshaw made a face. "Yah, I know. But this guy actually does some interesting work. Even when he's stealing from himself."
"You watch rock video?" LeBlanc put a hand to her throat with an exaggerated flutter. "Emily Dinshaw, a banger? I'm shocked."
"Stuff s junk," Silkwood declared. "Worse than all the porn put together. I don't know why we had to go into the music-video business. The company's survived this long without it." The man at the machines was still patting himself down in a way that seemed strangely rhythmic, oblivious to all the attention focused on him.
"It's big money," Clooney said importantly. Dinshaw almost turned her head far enough to give him a dirty look. "Really big money, if you've got the means for distribution and promotion that we do. It-"
"It may be really big money on the corporate level," Dinshaw said, still not looking at Clooney, "but it doesn't seem to be too rewarding on the individual level. Guy doesn't even have change for coffee."
"I'm going to loan him some," Gabe heard himself say, and got up just as Clooney was pulling out the chair.
"Quick thinking, Ludovic," LeBlanc called after him.
"Video reflexes," he called back, and regretted it immediately. Clooney would probably make something out of that to Manny. It was no secret that Clooney was Manny's self-appointed stooge. The only secret was that Clooney apparently didn't know it wasn't a secret. Nonetheless, he seemed unperturbed that he was openly and actively disliked. Perhaps he figured it as jealousy over his frequent raises, or perhaps he was just thick. Why are people so weird, Gabe wondered, and tapped Visual Mark on the shoulder.
He turned slowly, as if he were underwater, his faded green eyes seeming to search Gabe out from a distance. "Can I help you?" He put a slight emphasis on the second and fourth words so that it actually came out, "Can I help you?" Which, Gabe thought later, was not so unreasonable.
"Ah. I thought you looked like you needed, um, change for the machines." Gabe shrugged self-consciously; he could feel the entire Common Room watching.
The man's smile was unexpectedly broad and sunny. "That's a good way to put it. How did you know?"
Gabe had the sensation of going over a mental speed-bump. "Excuse me?"
"My whole life has been, 'Okay, change for the machines.' Every time they bring in a new machine, more change." He leaned a little closer, and Gabe caught a whiff of several smells, none of them cologne. "They're gonna think I spilled my guts to you, and I don't even know you." He paused, thinking. "Do I?"
Hurriedly Gabe pressed some change into his hand. "Here. Maybe you could use some coffee."
The man's head went up and down in a slow, deliberate movement. "God, the truth is running in the gutters today. Karma so thick you can cut it with a knife." He fed the coins Gabe had given him into the coffee-machine slot. "Gets that way every time there's change for the machines." A few moments later he pulled the cup out of the delivery well and toasted Gabe with it. "And the more change, the more you don't know what the fuck is going on. Right?"
"I don't think I can argue with that," Gabe said, backing up a step.
The man winked at him. "Stone-home right."
Feeling as if he'd had his brains stirred with a swizzle stick, Gabe turned around and started to walk away.
He must have stepped directly into the path of her fist, he thought later, adding his own momentum to hers and making the blow more powerful. At the time all he knew was that his head had exploded with color and sensation that did not register as pain until a full second afterwards, so that the secondary hit of his body against the carpeted floor was too slight for notice.
When his vision returned he was looking up at an uneven ring of faces hovering over him. The growing pain in his cheek suddenly skyrocketed to unbearable. He closed his eyes and waited for it to recede, but it wouldn't. It was like being tortured, like having all the free-floating anxiety and hostility in the room poured into one little area of his face. He drifted away from consciousness while someone demanded that everyone move back, move back, he needed air, goddammit.
Sometime after that he heard Dinshaw's slightly nasal voice saying, very seriously, "You could be fired for this. You could be arrested for this."
Marly's face appeared before his inner eye, smiling sarcastically. Are you gonna take that, hotwire? You can't possibly have done anything that bad already today.
"Bullshit," said an unfamiliar voice, low and gravelly with irritation. "I just got here. Nobody's gonna fire me this week."
That's telling them, Gabe thought. He imagined Caritha leaning over him now, her fingers squeezing his arm gently. Hotwire, you gonna live?
"Answer me, Gabe! Are you all right?" The hand on his arm squeezed harder, and he opened his eyes.
LeBlanc was bent over him. "Don't move, the doctor's on her way up. You went down like a stone, I think you even went out for a few moments. Did you lose consciousness, can you remember?"
He blinked into the barrage of words, feeling cheated.
"Now if he lost consciousness, how the fuck is he gonna remember it?" asked the strange voice.
Clooney leaned over LeBlanc from behind. "Gabe, do you know where you are?"
Gabe groaned. "I'm here."
"That oughta be good enough for anyone," the strange voice said, from somewhere to his left. "Get him on his feet, he can go another round."
Gabe struggled to sit up, LeBlanc still gripping his upper arm. He brushed her hand away and looked around. He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by everyone except the crazy man. Visual Mark, who had needed change for the machines No sign of him at all. Gabe touched the side of his face carefully
"Maybe that's all right where you come from," Dinshaw said glaring at someone, "but around here, we don't go trying to break people's faces." She glanced briefly in Clooney's direction. "Usually."
"I wasn't gonna break anybody's face." The edge in the voice hinted at a change of heart. Gabe finally focused on a medium-sized, solid-looking person dressed in what seemed to be odds and ends from the various closets of Rude Boys, mystics, and urban guerrillas. Had she slept in those clothes? It must have been a hell of a night. No wonder he'd gone down, he thought; even the dreadlocks looked mean.
The double doors to the Common Room whispered open. He couldn't remember hearing that before, when this woman had come in to punch his face. What had he done, anyway, and why wasn't anyone asking?
"What happened?" The doctor knelt in front of Gabe and held his chin between her fingers, looking into his eyes.
"That person hit him," Dinshaw said, pointing at the woman. "She just swung on him and knocked him down."
The doctor looked over her shoulder at the woman, leaning against the coffee machine with her arms folded. The fateful coffee machine, Gabe thought, feeling a sudden absurd urge to laugh.
"It was an accident," she said. "He stepped into the line of fire."
"Really." The doctor sounded amused. Gabe squinted against the light she was shining in his eyes. "Can you open your mouth?"
He managed to part his lips as she felt his jaw carefully. The strange woman moved a little closer, trying to see over the doctor's shoulder, and Gabe thought he saw her face soften a little with con
cern. She looked substantial enough to have taken that shot and possibly a bit more without as much trouble.
"No dislocation or break that I can feel," the doctor said, "but we'd better take your picture, in case there's a hairline fracture. And I'll give you some 'killers. That's gonna bother you for a while."
Clooney cleared his throat importantly. "Well, Gabe, do you think you can work on 'killers?"
Gabe wanted to give him a dirty look, but the doctor still had a firm grip on his chin. "Just local stuff, Clooney," she said, "transcutaneous patches. Don't worry your little head, nobody's going to get toxed on the job today."
"Quel fromage," said the stranger.
The doctor looked over her shoulder at her again. "You just said, 'What a cheese.'"
"I let it stand."
The double doors to the Common Room whispered open again, and Manny Rivera came in, looking slightly hurried and rumpled. He paused inside the entrance, forcing the doors to gape around him.
"So this is where it's all happening today," he said with false congeniality. Not real emotion but an incredible simulation, Gabe thought, suppressing the urge to laugh again. Manny looked around slowly, as if he were memorizing faces, before his gaze came to rest on him, where he was still sitting on the floor with the doctor holding his chin. The artificial friendliness in Manny's face faded as his eyebrows went up. "Is it physical?" he asked.
"Of course it's physical, just look at him." The stranger was glaring at Manny as if she wanted a piece of him, too. The crowd around Gabe melted away as everyone else in the room remembered there was someplace else to be. Manny moved away from the doors, releasing them briefly before they flapped open again for the mass emigration. Only the strange woman and the doctor remained where they were.
"It's nice to meet you at last," Manny said to the stranger when the room was empty. "You were always out when I visited EyeTraxx."
"Yah?" The woman tilted her head and frowned at him. "Which one are you, Chang or Rivera?"
The doctor got to her feet. "Downstairs for pictures before you do anything else today," she told Gabe firmly. "Pick up your patches after." She glanced at the woman again and deliberately walked in front of Manny on her way out.
Feeling ridiculous, Gabe pulled himself up on a nearby chair, started to sit, thought better of it, and simply stood, wondering if he could actually get out of the room without further exchange with Manny. But somehow it seemed unfair to leave the woman, whoever she was, to face Manny alone. Even if she had hit him.
Manny turned a mildly bewildered smile-frown on him. "And what happened to you?"
"I hurt my face," Gabe said through his swollen jaw. It came out sounding more like I hate I fashe.
"Well." Manny's brow wrinkled with a show of concern. "I presume we're still on for lunch?"
"Shertainly," Gabe said, nodding quickly.
"Good. That's good." Manny gave the woman a sidelong glance and left, marching through the center of the double doors, which promptly flew open and closed behind him, as if they understood their role in terms of his authority.
Unsure of what else to do, Gabe tried to smile at the woman with the still-functioning half of his mouth, to show her there were no hard feelings, while he waited for her to say something like, Sorry I hit you, or You would have been within your rights to say something, or even, Does it hurt much?
Instead, she turned away to pour coins into the nearest cold-drink machine and hit one of the buttons with the same fist she had used on him. A can rumbled down into the delivery well, and she picked it up, her fingers almost circling it entirely. She had big hands. No long red claws.
She paused and stared at him as if she were surprised he was still there.
"Why the fuck didn't you watch where you were going?"
Without waiting for an answer, she strode out of the Common Room, swinging around the left-hand door and giving it a shove as if it hadn't opened widely enough.
10
He knew trying to phone out was as futile as trying to walk out, but he'd had to make the attempt anyway. It was logged on the record of activity now, and Rivera would have something to say about it. But then, Rivera had probably been expecting it. The last surprise he'd given Rivera was the double cross; there wasn't going to be another one.
Keely shifted on the couch, putting a cushion under his knees and an extra pillow under his head. The corporate-issue mattress had been a little softer than what he was used to. So were the amenities; even the fresh-air-scented clothes they'd left for him were as soft as a baby blanket. Cush was the word, except for the extra-hard stuff on the phone line.
With a little concentrated effort, he should have been able to get around that, but the key word there was concentrated, or to be more precise, concentration. He just didn't have any. His mind was fogged over, in a very funny way. He felt alert enough, but his ambition was gone.
This was not exactly mysterious. Rivera had seen to it personally that he was fed and watered in this fancy stable, after he'd beefed up the watchdog program. The effects of whatever had been in the food or water or both would wear off eventually, certainly in time for the full overhaul of the security system Rivera had said he wanted. Along with a number of other things. Rivera was expecting plenty out of him. The only thing that really surprised him was that Rivera hadn't already had an in-house pet hacker to call his own.
But then, if he'd had, he wouldn't have needed to pay someone to crack EyeTraxx.
Keely looked over at the nine-screen dataline. The programs popping on and off barely registered with him. Occasionally he used the remote to turn up the sound on something that looked interesting, but everything took too much effort to follow. He wondered idly what Rivera had given him-mild Blank? Or just a garden-variety Thorazine derivative? Whatever it was, it was clever. He could think all he wanted, even dream up whole programs, but when he tried to do anything more complicated than press a button, the system failed. Not enough RAM, he thought with bitter amusement. Or too much RAM allotted to pure processing.
Jones was probably dead about it, dead several times over. Trying to deal with it. Because, as all therapy victims knew, il was not what happened, it was how you dealt with it. Thanks, brother, you're a big fucking help.
Not that he was going to win the Einstein Award for Smart Thinking himself. He wasn't sure which was more stupid- trying an end run around Rivera, or throwing in with him in the first place.
He'd sworn he wouldn't get involved with industrial espionage; in the past he'd turned down plenty of other offers from middle-management sharks looking for a way to turbo out of the corporate pack. But Rivera had interested him. Maybe because he'd been getting bored, or maybe because he'd felt the need to show Jones that B amp;E could be useful beyond personal gratification. Yah, play the big man for a dead man. The need to posture had gotten him more than he'd bargained for. Shit.
The fresh-air aroma from his shirt came up strong as he rolled over onto his side. Somehow he'd put disaster porn on the top-middle screen, and they were running the Twenty-Five Worst Air Crashes series. Pretty disgusting. He would change it as soon as he could muddle through a decision as to what to put on instead. Today was not his day for decisions. He hadn't been doing too well in that area lately anyway; his decision to hack Hall Galen Enterprises for Rivera had been the start of a sequence of bad career moves. So to speak.
Maybe if he'd known that Rivera had been Diversifications, he would have given him a hot dose of the Fish instead of service with a smile. But Rivera had been well shielded, communicating through an anonymous email-drop. They used the same one later to catch the data hacked out of HG.
Not an easy hack, but a pretty safe one, routed through a tangle of different nodes; in case HG detected anything, the cutoff would kick in on all the nodes simultaneously, frustrating even the swiftest trace-and-freeze. Of course, that had meant he couldn't access the data during the transfer, and Rivera was the only one with entry to the email-drop. Or so Rivera had tho
ught. He had honored Rivera's request in letter but not in spirit, piggybacking a small catch-and-copy on the channel into the drop. If Rivera was stupid enough to think he would leave himself totally ignorant of what they were hacking, then Rivera deserved to get hacked himself, which was what he'd had in mind all along.
What the hell. The guy was a fucking thief, a pampered corporate thief who couldn't even do his own dirty work, and his mistake was trusting another thief. While his own mistake, Keely reflected ruefully, was believing that Rivera couldn't do any dirty work. And believing that everything Rivera said wasn't a fucking lie. Yah, I'm after financial records; I want to know if this company's teetering and what it would take to buy them out. That was a good one, just because it was so typical. Or maybe it hadn't been a lie, maybe that had been all Rivera had thought he was going to get.
The socket stuff must have been the first shit to hit the Rivera fan, so to speak, which had probably made it that much easier for Rivera to be so openhanded. Bearer-chips waiting in this or that electronic teller. He'd spent the chips happily enough and bided his time until Rivera closed the E-mail drop, which would trigger the catch-and-copy to zap its contents directly and untraceably to him.
Rivera's final message containing the promised bonus had come just before the C amp;C. The bonus had turned out to be the specs for Sam's system.
When he'd decrypted the data and seen that wild little nano-thing you could make from an old insulin or endocrine pump, he'd had a mental blowout. He hated Diversifications from the bottom of his heart, them and their overpriced crap ripped from hacker designs, repackaged and foisted off on a gullible public as hot, new product. Like the Dodge-M program, a little facade the busy career person could stick on the electronic mailbox; made it look like you hadn't picked up your email when you already had-that was nothing more than a fooler loop, dumbed down enough so that it responded only to the E-mail system and called dedicated so the public would think of it as reliable instead of an idiot release of a smart program.