Synners

by Pat Cadigan

  "If we lose contact with them, we wouldn't see much for long."

  A new message appeared on the screen, just above the status line. ›Loading Headhunter programs. ‹

  "Headhunter programs?" Sam said. "A B-feature?"

  "One hell of a surprise for your father," Keely said, smiling at the screen.

  On the mattress Gabe looked jarringly peaceful, as if he were asleep and having the best dream of his life.

  For Gabe it was like crouching at the base of an enormous generator, the vibrations shuddering all the way through to his bones. He could feel Gina's presence as well, an energetic mix of anger, fear, and ready aggression that spoke to his own apprehension and uncertainty. On the outside he had believed a little more in the idea of joining forces with Mark and Art -Markt, now-than he did on the inside in this ragged landscape of what seemed to be enormous shadows of almost-things.

  "You think we can synthesize something?" The words came from Gina, but he recognized them as his own. "Really synthesize something," she added. "Something of us, to use against it."

  He started to reach out to her and then hesitated. Actually touch anyone this closely? Suddenly the idea of that kind of contact was a hard, wordless fright.

  "Part my brain and part yours," Gina said. "Doesn't get much more fucking intimate than that. If I can stand it, you can. What've you got?"

  He tried to think. What did he have?

  – -

  The house looked quiet enough, but then the whole street was quiet, and Gabe knew that was all wrong. All wrong- they were gone, a pile of dead chips on a cellar floor in Fairfax.

  "Not quite." Marly grinned down at him and then threw a muscular arm around his shoulders. On his other side Caritha slipped an arm around his waist and nudged him with the handcam. "Hope you don't mind about all the modifications. Been a shitload since you last saw us. You thought it was a glitch in the program, but it was him all along. Art. Only I guess he's calling himself Markt now. More to him."

  "More to everything," Marly added.

  Gabe was too stunned to speak. There was no doubt they were real, or as real as they ever had been, not just phantoms pulled from his memory but the programs themselves, saved or restored, he wasn't sure which.

  Programs?

  "Try again, hotwire," said Marly.

  The kid sitting at the laptop: Stone the fucking crows at home! This stuff s infected!

  You thought it was a glitch in the program, but it was him all along.

  Even after? Gabe wondered. Even after the sockets? He turned his attention inward, and there, deep in his mind, he found it, a little bit of a glow, the same glow that he saw in Marly's eyes, in Caritha's. It was like looking into an enormous dark box and discovering a very tiny, very perfect diamond. Incurably informed?

  There was a pull outward like the one he'd felt when Gina had yanked him out out of a chair one night a lifetime ago. Her touch was unmistakable.

  "Hate to interrupt you when you're contemplating the fucking jewel in the lotus," she said, "but it's here. The fucking program director's back."

  "Good," Caritha said, hefting the cam. "I want that spike. I don't like programs that go around blowing up people's brains."

  "Then let's go do a little damage," Marly said, and made a move toward the house, pulling Caritha and Gabe with her.

  From within the new configuration of Markt, Art reconvened and watched with real fondness. He'd always liked the first part of the Headhunters scenario, where Gabe went barging in with the women, a reluctant hero fast losing his reluctance for the sake of people he loved, and then developing a taste for heroics as he went along. That was the way he'd always read it in Marly and Caritha, anyway.

  Besides, it would help Ludovic if he just went to it as though it were the enemy he had always faced in House of the Head-hunters. Perhaps there really wasn't any other enemy for him anyway.

  Gina's enemy would be more difficult to articulate. He would have to leave that to the Mark part of his new self.

  Who do you love?

  The only thing nastier than forty-seven miles of barbed wire was forty-eight, and she hadn't had to go that far yet. Just through this crowd of bangers on the tiny little dance floor to a likely-looking head nodding up and down, and déjà vu shuddering through her like inner thunder, more than déjà vu. Déjà-voodoo: had happened because she was reliving it now.

  Who do you love?

  Say again, doll, I didn't hear you that time.

  She went through the door, stopped, looked at someone pounding it out with two sticks on the hood of an abandoned limo.

  Who abandons limos this time of night on this street at the outer edge of Hollywood, land of the lost?

  She went over and peered into the back window, cupping her hands around her eyes. The dark glass de-opaqued, and she saw herself and Ludovic lying side by side with connections trailing from their heads.

  Disturbed, she stepped back, and Quilmar threw an arm around her shoulders, drawing her into Valjean's long, narrow kitchen. "Fucking right there's nothing fucking wrong with porn," he said. "Porn is the fucking secret of life, sister-mine. If you can't fuck it, and it doesn't dance, eat it or throw it away. That's the fucking order of the universe, and I'm at the fucking top of the food-fuck-and-dance chain. And I don't know what that is"-he gestured at the limo, which was now on one of the screens in Valjean's living room-"but it makes me horny, and that's all that matters."

  Easy one; she left Quilmar in the kitchen again, turned away from the grotesque sight of him attempting the forcible seduction of a major appliance, and found herself back outside.

  !! U B THE ASS TO RISK!!

  Many Main-Run Features Starring U!

  COMPLETE ROCK VIDEO CATALOG, TOO!

  Gina nodded. It wasn't going to waste its energy trying to fool her with little things. Which didn't mean she wouldn't have to be any less careful.

  Know you once, know you always.

  Who do you love?

  Doll, why do you keep on askin me that? You must be seeing something I didn't say.

  Right; stone-fucking-home exactly. She could always see what he didn't say. With a fever in her chest. Nasty bridge, running from the top all the way down, hammering every step of the way, and she went, chased by her own growling need, but déjà -voodoo told her it was his, too. Her need and his, but hers had gone east, and his had gone west, hers had gone out, and his had gone in, and wasn't that always the fucking way of it?

  Who do you love?

  Oh, doll, wouldn't you like to know?

  Sticks beating it out on golden garbage cans, a roadmark to tell her she was going in the right direction. Move.

  The Mimosa was empty. She turned around and around, looking, but they weren't there now. They weren't hiding under the piers, they weren't watching from the shadows, they weren't anywhere. And then the ball of fire came anyway, and she started to walk through it.

  More than a lot were left with when the smoking lamp started to burn low-.

  Who-

  … Gina.. . (So faint she didn't think she'd really heard it.)

  There was a man with a different world in his eyes, still real, made of noise and light. More than a lot were left with-

  Who do-

  … Gina. .. (Yah, heard it this time.) There was a man, real, taking the long way home, walking a strip that had once been by the ocean where she had run across the nasty bridge, but that was all in the fire now, too, along with all those things that might have been.

  Who do you-

  There was a man in a room, changed for the machines, not real now, and a stranger, real, on a stony shore under a gray sky, turning slowly to her.

  Do you still want to?

  Running down the long road. Sparks to lightning, white and otherwise.

  Who do you love?

  You tell me, doll.

  He was there on the sand, waiting, and she made a move toward him.

  Gina!

  Something bumped her, an
d the memory came up like light.

  You win the game as soon as you get them to say it. Then you do whatever you want. And she'd never said it, not once.

  "Too fucking easy," she said, backing way, way off, until the Mimosa and the ball of fire she hadn't walked through was as small as something she might see from the wrong end of a telescope. "Where is it, really?"

  Old habits, they do die hard, don't they. That's yours, ain't it-looking for Mark. And finding him.

  She reached for Markt, but the sense of him was shockingly absent. Nor could she get a sense of Ludovic. She was suddenly and most definitely alone. Ridiculous, someone had just been calling her name-

  And now you can find him wherever you look. What you've always wanted. Whether you know it or not. And I want you. I want you.

  What the fuck was she supposed to do now?

  Whatever s right, Gina.

  Whatever's-

  --

  Markt looked sympathetic-both of him. He was there so suddenly, she didn't have time to be surprised, or even to demand where the fuck he'd been. "What's your weak spot, Gina? Better get to it before he does."

  Weariness was a sudden ache all the way through her. "My weak spot. You got something we can make a list with?"

  Markt glowed at her. "Who do you still want to love?"

  "-right," she growled. She hadn't taken it through the wire, but she had imagined how it would be; how it was. Like floating through a tangible fog bank, and as each shadow pulsed, there would be a corresponding pressure deep in the head, an invisible finger pressing here, and here, and here, searching for some particularly sensitive spot. Like being molested in some weird, witchy way.

  "I want you…"

  She was in a place from years before, and Dylan's strangely engaging nasal voice was speaking the truth for both of them. Mark was sitting on the floor, waiting for her reaction.

  Laugh that old laugh, break it up and break it down. Hey, jellyroll-

  But it wasn't anything to laugh about, was it? Missed chances, they don't have a lot of humor value, do they? So now there's a second chance. You gonna take it this time, or shine it on?

  The desire in the room had been electric, was electric now. Not just the sex, but the full, rounded desire for completion. She'd felt that, too, the same way he had. Completion.

  "But is there really such a thing as a second chance?"

  Ludovic was standing over by the door. Mark turned up the music, and Ludovic melted away. Right, he hadn't figured into it then.

  But he did now. He wasn't a missed chance. He was the one she was going to have to do something about.

  Mark was still waiting. But this was an easy one, too. She opened her mouth to laugh that old laugh.

  "Are you sure you want to do that?" he said seriously. "Looking for me all those years, and now you found me again. Wouldn't you rather save me this time? You could."

  In the moment of hesitation, the pictures came to her. Two decades and some-odd of the show that had no end, her life, his life, their life, hit-and-run, kiss-and-tell, a little walk that had turned into a long run. Who do you still want to love?

  Oh, lover, I been afraid you'd ask me that.

  "Save me," Mark said, the plea in his voice carefully small. "I don't want to be this way. If I did, do you think I'd have made it so fucking easy on you?"

  Oh, lover, I been afraid you'd ask me that, too.

  They were flattened against the wall in the dark hallway, Marly's strong arm thrown across his chest. Gabe waited for the voice, wondering who it would sound like.

  "It's gonna be different this time, hotwire," Marly whispered. "You ready?"

  "What?" he said, confused.

  "You're gonna have to be. Here it comes." Before he could protest, she grabbed him and swung him around to stand in the doorway all alone.

  He was looking across the twentieth-floor terrace at Gina standing on the railing. She had the harness on, but he saw that the cords weren't connected to the railing this time. When she went over, she would be falling for real.

  For… 'real'? Could it be 'real' this way, in here?

  Oh, yah; it would be different, maybe, but no less real, a virtual fall and a virtual impact, but when she hit bottom, the effect would amount to something real.

  Did she know?

  He couldn't tell for certain. She seemed to know and not know at the same time, and something suggested she would accept it either way.

  Schrodinger s Gina.

  Gabe frowned; where had that come from? He took a step toward her.

  "Floor's mined," Caritha said offhandedly.

  Gina looked over her shoulder at him, her gaze both meeting him and going through him in an odd way. What was she seeing, he wondered. Did she even realize she was on the railing? What was her context?

  You got to know your context, because you're only gonna get one shot at getting into it.

  Yes, but if she thought it was one thing, and he thought it was another, then what was the real context? He burned with impatience and frustration. How was he supposed to know what to do?

  "Whatever's right," Gina said. "How'd you like to get even?"

  Even? He could almost have laughed. There was nothing even about Gina.

  The loose harness connections on the rail swayed slightly in the breeze.

  "Make up your mind," she said. "I gotta go one way or the other, I jump or you push me."

  No, that was wrong, he thought wildly, but he had no way to tell her. It wasn't in her context.

  "Gettin' late, hotwire," Marly said. Her voice sounded just a bit strange to him now. "Already know you can't argue. What's next?"

  He turned in what he thought was her direction, and the images rushed over him.

  Go somewhere. Go somewhere.

  Floor's mined.

  Change for the machines.

  MORE DRUGS.

  Run Personnel run.

  Take a little walk with me.

  Why the fuck didn't you watch where you were going?

  The desire on the terrace was electric. Gina started to turn away from him. The scene blurred in front of him, briefly became an arc of stony shore around a lake. He was back on the terrace before he could even be startled, and he saw Gina's knees bend as she prepared to jump.

  Somewhere, someone was laughing. If you can't fuck it and it doesn't dance-

  He shoved the thought away. If you can't argue, and you can't stop it…

  Last thing they'd expect.

  Hey, hotwire-you're an asshole.

  Yah, but I'm trying to quit.

  Just as her feet left the rail, he hurled himself forward and caught her in midair, at the moment before she dropped.

  Port in a storm, nowhere else to go. That bother you?

  She already knew the answer to that, but he told her anyway. They toppled onto the sagging mattress in a frantic, urgent tangle.

  That's what I've got: a port in a storm, he thought.

  That's more than most people are left with when the smoking lamp starts to burn low.

  The feel of her was even more tangible in this state, if that was possible. The sense-memory of her T-shirt against his hands was wildly vivid, the warmth of her skin a shocking contrast, and then the taste and smell of her flooded him, carrying him to her like a hurricane tide.

  Her physical strength had caught him unawares, in spite of that punch she'd given him. The power in her muscles had been astonishing. Or maybe it had been the force of her passion that had taken him by surprise, so different from long-ago, bloodless couplings with Catherine, no paler for being dim in the recollection.

  Or maybe it had been the force of his own passion that had been the real stunner that night (was the real stunner now); until then he had all but forgotten that there was even the potential for passion inside him, let alone at this intensity. But he could, could then, could now-

  We do what we do. We do it because we can. The words came to him now clearly, what he had only been able to und
erstand in a primitive, gut-level way from the sound of her breathing in the dark. I'm lucky I can dance, and so are you, and we're lucky we can dance together now. Take a little walk with me. A little traveling music, please. Here it comes. Be there for you. What does this remind you of, an open window or an open wound…

  The response poured from him without his willing it.

  Well, the fact is, Gina, sometimes it looks like one and sometimes like the other, and it's really a combination of both. But what really matters, Gina, what really matters is, I climbed on in, because ninety percent of life is being there, and the other ten percent is being there on time, and it was time. And it still is, Gina. It still is time. But do I really have to tell you that?

  No, he hadn't. But it had been good for her to hear it. She'd wanted to hear it.

  Don't tell me who my enemy is; tell me who it isn't.

  Okay, Gina; whatever works, whatever s right.

  "How the fuck did you find me?"

  "It wasn't that hard," Gabe said. "Not once I had the right associations."

  There was a pause on the brink of one moment before the next.

  "Jesus, yes, we've both got that, Ludovic. Run with it from there."

  From there to anywhere, he thought. He could do that. What else did he have? Take a little walk with me.

  Right; that, too-a walk he'd taken, a way. Go somewhere. And what else? Change for the machines.

  MORE DRUGS.

  Watch out, it can make you a little stupid. Definitely got that, Gabe thought, bemused; definitely got a little stupid.

  So? The kid said anything could be useful.

  How about the C-word? Commitment.

  Lover, sometimes that's all you got. Remember?

  Sometimes, Gina. But not this time.

  – -

  "All right," Mark said lightly, "I gave you that one. Now you can say I should have known better. That's okay, Gina. I got a million of them-"

  – and they ain't all for you.