Synners

by Pat Cadigan

  He got almost all the way to the southern edge of Westwood before he had to come to a complete stop again. Fifteen minutes later GridLid announced that high traffic concentration had brought Olympic to a standstill, stay on La Cienega, which was now moving fairly well, or try Venice Boulevard.

  Gabe peered through the scratched plastic windshield at the sky, expecting to see a heli circling overhead. Nothing; not even a rich-commuters transport heading for Topanga or Malibu. GridLid's voice started to repeat the warning about Olympic, and he shut off the audio. It all felt too much like the story of his life, and the last thing he wanted was GridLid rubbing his nose in it.

  – -

  Near the old 20th Century-Fox Studios buildings, the halt seemed to be permanent. GridLid sounded apologetic about the multivehicle pileup at the Sepulveda intersection, as if it were their fault somehow. All things considered, it probably was.

  Which left him sitting in a cheap rental with a sore nose, Gabe thought, looking at the old buildings. They had been broken up into studio rental space sometime after 20th Century Fox had failed to continue to score interest with the catchy name of Twenty-First Century Fox. Perhaps they should have changed the Fox for something a bit more long-lived. Gabe had always known the place as a cluster of studios; for a short period of time early on in his dubious Diversifications career and even more dubious marriage, he had spent a few hours sharing studio space with another aspiring artist. He'd lost track of Consuela after giving up his half of the studio, but to his surprise the directory sign listed her as still being resident.

  On impulse he twisted the wheel hard and pulled into the parking lot just before he would have inched too far past it. The listing indicated she had moved up to a larger studio than the one they had shared, which must have meant she was doing well, even though he couldn't remember seeing her name anywhere. Not that he'd been keeping up. Once he'd giiven up the studio space, he'd consciously avoided any news from the art world.

  She had the back upper room in the largest building now; to his surprise there were no visible security devices, no guards to challenge him. All he had to do was walk in, go upstairs, and press a small lighted panel next to the door. The panel gave him pause. The usual Ring for Entry sign had been replaced with Come in If You Dare.

  Consuela must be feeling pretty sure of herself, he thought, and for a moment he wasn't sure that he did dare. Then he pressed the panel, and the door swung open silently.

  He stepped in and found himself underwater.

  Ribbons of seaweed in neon colors undulated lazily upward from the ocean floor, lighting up the semidark with cold fire. Gabe hesitated, letting the door fall shut behind him, and took a step forward. His foot passed through the pale, soft-looking ocean floor and disappeared; he could feel the more conventional floor below, but the illusion never gave way to show it to him. Consuela was doing awfully well, he thought; only the very rich and large corps like Diversifications had projectors of this quality.

  A luminous purple octopus crawled over the top of a waist-high rock and took a look at him, its arms moving with sensuous grace; a spiny fish floated out of the shadows ahead of him like a dignified airship. He blinked. Not quite a fish-the spines were needles growing out of chips instead of scales. Its enormous brown glass eyes surveyed him with cold-blooded solemnity.

  "What do you want?" the fish asked him in the slightly accented female contralto that was still familiar to him.

  "Hello, Consuela," he said. "It's me. Gabe Ludovic."

  The fish flicked its tail and darted away in a cloud of tiny, sparkling bubbles. Gabe waited; Consuela always had been quirky. Maybe that was the difference between successful artists and himself, the quirk factor. He scored pretty low on that meter.

  There was a shimmer in the water, and then a silver shark sailed up and over his head in a wide arc, the muscular body shining. Crushed roses trailed from the jaws. "You've been a stranger," the shark said with Consuela's voice.

  "And you've done well," he said, watching the shark roll over and over as it sailed around for another pass over him.

  "Sometimes I'd get to wondering whatever the hell happened to you." The shark came around, aimed itself at his face and swooped upward at the last moment. One of the roses drifted down and landed just at his feet. "Pick it up."

  Gabe bent and put two fingers around the illusion of stem. A thorn disappeared into the ball of his thumb. He raised his hand, and the rose came with it, moving exactly as if he were really holding it. "That's good, Con."

  "Better than that." The crushed petals opened up, and he saw her face within. "Check this."

  Blood was trickling from where the thorn had sunk into his flesh. Painless blood. Almost as deadly as bloodless pain, he diought, a bit boggled. "Ouch," he said.

  The aristocratic face in the heart of the rose didn't look smug. Consuela had a little too much dignity for that. "Didn't ever expect to see you again. Whatever the hell did happen to you, anyway?"

  "I don't know," he said. "Things."

  "And stuff and people and all like that?" Her smile made her look hard; it always had. She was hard, though. There was something about Consuela that he'd found slightly scary, scary the way an unreal thorn drawing unreal blood from the ball of his thumb was scary. Everything in her was directed one way, into her work, and in that way perhaps she wasn't quite so different from Catherine, and maybe that was what he'd found frightening about her. But Catherine's drive came out as multimillion dollar real estate deals, and Consuela's-

  He got up and moved farther into the room, looking around. The ceiling was invisible in shadows above him; he caught a glimpse of a small school of glowing fish moving in jerky choreography, leaving minor, angular trails behind them. The purple octopus was still lazing on the rock, watching him with a gaze so intelligent he squirmed inwardly. One of the long arms lifted and beckoned to him. He went over to the rock slowly; the underwater ambience had seeped into him, taking him over. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling.

  "You gave up, didn't you?" the octopus said.

  Gabe shrugged, laying the rose across his palm. It was hard to maintain the illusion of holding it without looking at it constantly. "Maybe I just got real. Like they used to say." He gestured at the environment. "Something like this is beyond me. There's not much call for it with commercials, anyway."

  "That's shit. There would be, if you did it right. They'll call for anything if you do it right for long enough."

  "I never had your drive, Con."

  "You did, you just never put it in gear. And you know it. The octopus blinked, furling its tentacles briefly to show the glittering suction cups underneath. "Why'd you think to come here?"

  "Happened to be in the neighborhood, thought I'd drop in."

  "Bad clog caught you on Olympic?"

  He laughed. "How in hell did you get a setup like this?"

  "Little by little, Gabe. Took years."

  "What's wrong with a simple headmount?"

  "Not big enough. The world's not big enough. If it were, we wouldn't need to make worlds like this."

  A skate slipped past him, flicking its tail like a whip, followed by a waving mass of jellyfish in assorted sizes and colors. Gabe ducked reflexively, and one of them dragged its streamers across his shoulder. The barbs on the end struck sparks of light. One of Consuela's inventions. "Are you ever going to put this on-line?" he asked.

  "It is on-line, for anyone who cares to find it."

  "How do you live? I mean, what are you doing for paying work?"

  "Sleeping with benefactors."

  "Oh."

  She laughed heartily, a deep, grand-opera kind of laugh. "Listen, it's not so bad. We're all art lovers, after all." She laughed again. "Do you remember when we used to share space downstairs? You must, you're here. You were almost never here then, though."

  "The expense," he said. "I couldn't justify paying even half rent on a place where I would just sit and stare." He looked around, shaking his head. "Cath
erine was right."

  "She left you yet?"

  Dumbfounded, he stared at the octopus, nodding. "Quite recently."

  "Next time you sleep with someone, make sure it's a benefactor."

  He took a breath and then blew it out. "Ouch. I felt that one, Con."

  "You were meant to. Listen: the benefactors I sleep with never see me. Not me. They don't even know what I look like, and they don't care. They come in here and step into whatever world it is they want made for them, and I take care of them. A headmount isn't big enough. Though they all use hotsuits. It's a living, it's what I have to do." The octopus winked. "It's not so bad. They're just humans, after all. Just humans. You're holding one of them up."

  "Sorry," he said, stepping back from the rock. "I'll go."

  "Don't apologize. Come back instead."

  He laughed. "I don't think you need a studio-mate to help with expenses anymore, Con."

  "But maybe you need to feel good." Her voice came from the rose. He turned it to look into its heart. Her face gazed out at him, clear and wise.

  "I'm not a benefactor," he said uneasily. Consuela had never seemed the slightest bit interested in him before. The whole idea made him a little queasy and more than a little curious.

  "You could be a benefactee," she said. "Or whatever it's called."

  He dropped the rose and backed toward the door. "Not me. I just-" He shrugged. "Not me, Consuela."

  "Stop."

  Gabe froze with his hand on the knob.

  "If you don't come here, go somewhere. Do you get me? Go somewhere."

  He ducked his head in a nod and fled, pulling the door shut behind him a little too hard before he half ran back to the rental in the parking lot.

  He had to pull around a large private car to get back out onto Olympic; perhaps it belonged to Consuela's benefactor, the one he had apparently delayed with his visit.

  "Go somewhere," he muttered as he edged into the slow-moving traffic on Olympic. "Go somewhere. Sure thing, Con. If the clog ever lets up, I can go to the moon."

  13

  "Yes?" said Manny, standing at attention.

  The formally dressed woman sitting on the couch in the crowded sunken living room stood up. She was a representative from one of the western states, but at the moment Manny couldn't remember which one. "I'm sure you're expecting this question, so I'll get it out of the way for all of us." She looked around with a professional smile. "It seems to me that this procedure, as you call it, has enormous potential for abuse. What sort of safeguards have you considered?"

  Manny mirrored her smile. "You'll pardon me for saying so, but this seems to be a, ah, legislative matter."

  Everyone in the room laughed.

  "Precisely." The representative folded her arms. "So perhaps I should reword the question. Why should we push for legalization of a procedure that has such enormous potential for abuse? And with such potential do you really think the American people will even want it?"

  "I believe in offering people a choice," Manny said smoothly, getting another round of appreciative laughs. "We're not asking for a law to make it mandatory, only permissible. When implants first became generally available for therapeutic reasons-epilepsy, manic-depression, autism, and other neurological disorders-there was, as I recall, quite a lot of public concern over the potential for abuse there. And we all know there is abuse. There isn't a fair-sized city anywhere in America-or in the world, for that matter-that doesn't have its share of feel-good mills, fitting the irresponsible with ecstasy buttons, giving on-off switches to people who are merely weak in character. Nonetheless, I don't think any of us would deny a manic-depressive the opportunity to function normally and effectively, free of drugs that may wear off prematurely or have irritating side effects. I don't think any of us would refuse a second chance to someone with brain damage sustained in an accident-"

  He went on, aware of Mirisch from the Upstairs Team beaming at him and nodding. Mirisch, the Great Grey Executive, with his silver hair and matching silver suits. Mirisch hadn't thought he was really capable of addressing a roomful of senators and representatives and other VIPs. Manny was giving him an eyeful and an earful tonight.

  Several hundred words later he wasn't sure he'd completely satisfied the representative, but she sat down without further comment.

  On the left side of the room, an older man with more sideburns than face waved a peremptory finger at him and stood up without waiting to be acknowledged. "Say we get it legalized. You're not actually suggesting that this procedure be performed on school-age children?"

  Manny inclined his head slightly. "I believe I mentioned that, except for cases of organic damage, autism, seizure disorders, or dyslexia, it's not meant for individuals who have not attained full physical growth." Manny looked away, searching the room, and then nodded at an elegant black woman before the man could say anything else.

  "You mention freedom of choice," she said. "However, we all know that often freedom of choice is a fantasy. You've told us that direct input to the brain will be a more vivid experience than even what a head-mounted monitor delivers. Isn't there a danger here of literally putting ideas into people's heads, of programming them?"

  "That's what I was trying to say before," called the first woman. "I think that potential for abuse could outweigh the benefits."

  Everyone was looking at him expectantly now, including the now-unsmiling Mirisch. Watch this, Grey Boy. "That could be true," he said slowly, "but Dr. Joslin's research has uncovered some very interesting facts about brain output and input, one of those facts being, it's far easier to obtain output than it is to input anything. Stated another way, it's far easier to express one's self than to learn anything, as any of you with children may know only too well."

  He got a respectable if tentative laugh on that one. Mirisch was almost smiling again. "Dr. Joslin has, in fact, researched the possibility of using sockets for instant education-instant doctors, for example, or instant lawyers. Instant politicians-" Another laugh. "Instant architects, instant neurosurgeons, and the like. However, it seems humans learn by doing. An instant neurosurgeon, for example, would still lack experience. Dr. Joslin emphasized to me that sockets do not impart experience. And there is the matter of the medium. The output of a given brain would be stored in a variation of the conventional software we use now. 'Literally putting ideas into people's heads' would be more likely if we used the sockets for a direct connection between two or more brains."

  The woman looked troubled. "And would that be feasible?" she asked.

  "It's not feasible now," he said. "Perhaps that is one of the things that should be legislated against."

  The laughs were still tentative. An older Oriental woman directly in front of him stood up. "Why have you decided to launch this great breakthrough, as you call it, by using it as a more efficient means to produce rock videos?"

  She got a round of applause for that, especially from the older man in the back, who shouted, "Good question!" Manny glanced over at the bar, where the Beater stood silently nursing a drink, and waited for the room to quiet down before he answered. Mirisch looked positively stony now. Don't sweat yet, Manny thought at him, wait till I'm circling around your spot on the Upstairs Team.

  "It's not a more efficient production of rock video that we are interested in, exactly, but rather the individual involved. He goes by the professional name of Visual Mark, and Dr. Joslin informs me that the visualizing center of his brain is hypertrophied-overdeveloped, that is, so overdeveloped that he should have no trouble at all sending out anything he visualizes. We also have another possible candidate, though less is known about that brain. Perhaps we might be able to find someone in a loftier type of profession, but rather than conduct a talent search, it seems far more efficient to go with someone we already know is suitable." Manny allowed himself a small laugh. "As for rock video-well, it's what he does for a living. He's a volunteer, in case anyone's wondering, which is another point in his favor. We might find so
meone in another line of work with even better visualization abilities, but there's no guarantee that person would agree to pioneer for us."

  The questions went on for twenty minutes longer before Mirisch finally stood up and announced the presentation had to come to an end, or there wouldn't be enough time left to enjoy themselves. This drew the most enthusiastic applause of the night. Promise them anything, but give them a party, Manny thought as he stepped aside to let Mirisch take over. It was a relief; he had begun to tire even before the question-and-answer session, though he doubted that anyone had noticed. The old iron control had pulled him through again.

  Earlier the control had slipped a little; not much, just enough that he had looked dismayed when he'd climbed into the transport on the roof of the Diversifications building and found the Beater already sitting in the backseat. But the flight out had been smooth and quick, and the Beater hadn't been inclined to conversation any more then he had.

  The Beater was still standing down at the other end of the bar, looking at him dourly. The Beater. What kind of a name was that for a fifty-year-old man? That alone would tell you they were cases, that whole EyeTraxx oddlot. At least this one had behaved himself. If he hadn't, Manny knew the Upstairs Team would have held him responsible, and that would have been the end of all the benefits he'd gained from instigating the EyeTraxx coup.

  They must have suspected how he'd done it, Manny thought as he watched Despres, the junior member of the Upstairs Team, working on Belle Kearney from the Food, Drug, and Software Administration. No one had asked him a thing when he'd presented Joslin's research to them, along with Hall Galen's financial history and an outline of how Diversifications could acquire EyeTraxx by feinting a takeover of Hall Galen Enterprises as a whole. Joslin's sockets were a little out of Diversifications' usual line, but nobody had said a thing about that, either. An opportunity was an opportunity, and even a lightweight like Mirisch, who had paused in his mingling to beam at Despres and Kearney, could see this was major stuff.